The Groaning Drones That Clone

The 18th century is one of great reckoning for the human race. It is then that stalwarts like James Watt and Samuel Crompton who dreamed of going beyond the confines of human limitations. They devised methods  of compounding limited intellect with compartmentalization to produce mass scale.

Each blue collar employee had one great fault. It could not combine efficiency with speed to produce effectiveness. There was a payoff between the two and either one had to be compromised to effect the other.

The industrial revolution changed that formula. Speed and quality were now directly proportional to each other rather than inversely. This was the game changer that took us from bullock carts to mechanized cars. Each single worker focussed on a task or function leading to specialization. Different such functions created an optimized process. A hive of such processes created an efficient factory of effective cost benefit ratios.

The job of the white collar was now devoted to mind rending while the blue collar was limited to muscle  bending. The executives created the processes that employed standard procedures. These procedures were then drilled into the shop floor to bring about uniformity. Workers wore uniforms and worked in uniform with their colleagues to mass produce goods for consumption that had homogeneity in dimensions, be it size, smell, taste, feel, or use.

But in this cycle of repeatability and reproducibility a critical natural skill was forcibly suppressed. Personal creativity lost out to cluster confined commerciality. What was created is a workforce of drones programmed to run mechanically from clock-in to clock-out employed to run the same job at the same interval to produce the same output.

Today, the 21st century reveres the spinning mill tenets. Competition has created a need for cost-effective environment where all functions and their underlying processes are industrialized. Every task, job, and interaction is scripted for efficacy. The mantra has crossed the border of product manufacture into the realms of services and non-tangibles. Personalization is a cost factor and so is creativity. Yet organizations seek ways to vault over their competitors. How can they create new winning formulae without innovation. And how can innovation occur without creativity? And how can creativity flow from a mindless workforce employed for efficiency?

How can the groaning drones running jobs involving cloned processes to expel planned outputs ever create a new way of being? Do we dare think or just go about doing our jobs?

When Love and Hate Collide

Have you ever experienced the feeling of two intense conflicting emotions within you collide against each other sinking you into a vortex of immesurable ache?

There is probably no way to describe the feeling but I do draw a parallel of it to a star-burst causing a black hole where all pleasantness, positivity, and pristineness get sucked in and all that is left behind is fragments of unwanted bitterness scattered about swirling around, reminding you of your destructed self.

The more you think of it the more you get dragged into this quagmire of pitch black, a cesspool of slickness that pulls you in, sucking the life breath out of you. This is not depression, not pain, not hurt. It is the unsurmountable ache in the core of your being that wrenches out of you any hope, any faith, any  belief that you take comfort from.

But why does that happen? When love and hate collide, why does the positive and negative not balance out the equation? Why does hate dissolve the love and leave back a distasteful miasma of pith that is unending to surmount.

While you battle the swirl, do try to pace out this quest so that sanity prevails.

Muted Media

Haiti, Cuba, Turkey... what are these? Till yesterday these were names on maps, pin points on the globe that evoked abysmal reactions from scattered folks remotely associated with these places through kith, kin, wealth, or whim.

Depression, recession, regression, repression... what do these mean? Till a decade back these were concepts that exploited the pages of a thick bound economic text that lay waste in the far corners of a library seldom visited by anyone beside goggly eyed nerds chasing dreams of financial vital statistics in a desperation over the inability to score numbers within their super set of colleagues.

Hate crimes, racial wars, teen pregnancies, substance abuse... where did they origin? Till a history ago these were independent stray instances that got institutionalized in script and scene, text and score creating copy cat followings propelling an occurrence into an event.

What is the common thread tying each of these phenomenon together? Accessible media. Apart from the fact that each of these is a truth that occurred somewhere, sometime, somehow; there was nothing more to these. One day's discussion, the next day's faded memory. That was it.

Before common media became available to the masses calamities happened and made way for something else. News was a compendium of good and bad, joys and sorrows, remorse and exultance.

Today the front page news is a mash-up of all the possible social and natural ills that pockmark human habitation. Glad tidings are blocked for the even-numbered rarely-read pages of newspapers and fillers in the newscasts that rarely evoke any attention warranting a second mention or a follow-up.

The world is getting sadder each day. Mournful melancholy manipulates the airwaves. Everything that we are communicated with is an attempt to squeeze the tears from our eyes and discomfort from our hearts in order to get us to surrender our guilt ridden wallets in lieu of sympathetic experiences that we narrowly avoided.

Can we have more responsible media that reports incidents without dramatizing them into potboilers. Can intelligent media not be synonymous with gory media. Can we drink our cuppa teas without experiencing a tempest in the teacup?

Truth I Dare

It started with game shows testing physical prowess. Next came the quiz shows testing intellect. It is now the age of reality shows testing our emotional quotient (and common sense).

But the single most absurd show to date is "Sach ka Saamna" a.k.a. the desi "Moment of Truth" trying to test moral fiber for cash. Isn't that an oxymoron already?

But let me not get preachy over it. From a pure cash flow perspective, the odds are simply insurmountable against the wins. At every stage of the game, one loses acquaintances, friends, and family against the backdrop of honesty. Damn, if you wanted to remain chaste, why did you do it. If you did do the deed, why not admit in private? And now that you have admitted in public, be ready to get ostracized. Make no bones about it.

So what is the win against the losses. The penultimate prize of one crore (does attract the tax folks and subsidizes your win post Income Tax, Gift Tax, Cess, and other variables) to a mere 54 lakhs. That in today's world is a 2bhk in a upcoming apartment complex. That's it! Or perhaps the game show producers knew of the ostrasization and calculated the winnings for a life cast away. Probably move to the dredges of society and live a life of hermitage for the deeds done.

So if you are ready to give up on life try the Smita Mathai concept...
Q: Do you love your mother-in-law more than your mother?
A: Yes (mother shattered)

Q: Did you ever wish your husband dead?
A: Yes (mother-in-law shattered)

Q: Did you think of sleeping with any man other than your husband?
A: Yes (husband shattered)

Q: Would she sleep with any other man if she was sure her husband wouldn't find out?
A: No (Polygraph shattered!)

No Gratitude for Alms in Palms

It's the 9'o clock commuter rush. My car is playing musical chairs with the traffic signal to the beat of fm music. Focusing on the red circle that controls my path, I grit my teeth and silently pray for it to turn green...

Suddenly a knock on windowpane. No! A begging lady with an infant swaddled in rags draws my attention to her. Her face spells out abject destitute and the rest of her agree in unison. The child is bundled in a rag-bag tied to her side while he sleeps away the meticulations of his mother's ministrations. In a hope to evoke sympathy she plays peek-a-boo with her child and my eyes, switching between covering him up and displaying him for my benefit.

My heart responds with the emotion the lady wishes to evoke and begins to ache at the sight. My brain twitches into attention begging for me to retain attention at the red dot of passage. My body with its separate appendages leans forward to fork out a few coins to alleviate the rigor mortise my heart is suddenly heading towards.

One rupee is what I would have ended up giving the lady had it not been for the signal that turned green heralding me towards my destination and her lossful resignation. As I proceed forward, I cannot but help looking into the rear view mirror to ensure she reaches the sidewalk safely. A penny lost should not be the reason for other greater miseries .

While I reach work, the thought of the persistent lady, her baby, and my apathy keeps replaying in the dark realms of my mind. So I did not dole out alms. What did I do and not do in doing so? Did I deprive her of a contribution, a meal, a livelihood, or a fortune? I definitely didn't think so. Would I have felt a loss had I given her that coin? Again, definitely not. So what stopped me?

Was it the understanding that what she would have got from me and the multitude of others who have already or will give her their coinage would not be hers to keep. Rather it would be her ticket to continue work in this zone of controlled monopoly where alms convert loose change into hot cash in the wee hours of the day.