Since the advent of Whattsapp and the proliferation of a concept called “forwarding a forward”, I have my serious doubts that this may be taking the intelligent human race “backwards” and literally so. The concept of sending Short Mobile Messages called SMS, before the advent of the Forward, brought in a major change in the writing skills of the generation and a new concept of throwing the formal spellings and formal sentence structure out of the window. The trend was so popular that even the classic believers of preserving sanity in the use of English language were found making a vain attempt at emulating the abbreviated, broken, mutilated form of SMS lingo to stay Updated and happening in front of the young. The Whatsapp University, so to say, has been churning out graduates, post graduates and doctorates in the specialization of Forwards. People who forward tens of received forwards that they come across in the hundreds of groups that they subscribe to, behave in a pseudo intelligent manner as if by forwarding the forward they have achieved a major feat of intelligence. This is leading to pseudo intellectualism and causing a major harm to an individual who is losing sight of logical and analytical thinking and somehow believes that a forward that is forwarded is perhaps his/her intellectual achievement. If this trend continues unabated, I am afraid it is going to produce a generation that would be deprived of a major portion of its intellectual prowess and the whole process is likely to lead to disaster. Stop forwarding a forward to stop going backward
Whenever you travelled back to India from an advanced foreign land you always wondered how come they can manage such cleanliness on the roads, washrooms, stations, metros and almost anywhere and everywhere. I remember my days in the Indian capital where you were scared to travel to certain areas of the city and didn’t drink enough water for the fear of having to go through the ordeal of finding a clean washroom or would go through an open anesthesia from a public lavatory. Neerad C Chaudhary the famous Anglophile and writer once wrote in his treatise the “The Continent of Circe” “India is an open shit house” While travelling in trains one would not eat food for the fear of having to use the public facility on the trains which scared you for your safety. I remember a German student of mine who was working for the Indo German Tool Room in Indore, narrating to me the horrendous experience of driving back home from office, about half an hour away to be able to use the wash room at home as his description of the Indian Lavatory put me to shame. Then something very interesting happened, a couple of years ago. Swachh Bharat campaign (Clean India campaign) was introduced in India and I happened to be living in Indore, (which incidentally has been on number One position in India for the last four years in cleanliness). Like any other Indian I was skeptical about the efficacy of the project, as we Indians though pious in our approach to life, had very poor civic sense and had forgotten the concept of living in a community, (though the oldest known civilizations of Mohenjodaro and Harappa were Indian civilizations) As a Vice President of our RWA, I managed enough support from the Executive body and members of the colony and did “Shram daan” voluntary service to clean the colony by brooming and sweeping the roads, common facilities, the temple area, gardens et al. Those days this trend of politicians and other leaders really caught on where the Selfie brigade did not lose an opportunity to take a couple of selfies doing some ornamental cleanliness drives. These ornamental drives may not have really helped in improving cleanliness of the cities, but definitely did something interesting by focusing the issue of the desire to keep our cities clean. It then looked like a pipe dream what with Paan chewing Indians spitting anywhere on the roads, streets, freshly painted walls, malls…you name it and you would find the famous Hussain instant paintings littering the city. Most of the famous pictures of men lining up against a wall in the open and urinating, were of Indian urologists( pardon the expression for the lack of a word for open urination) or the closest slang being , going round the corner( literally perhaps) or peeing. But what has taken everybody in Indore by surprise is the storm that shook all shackles of behaviourial, thought and conceptual patterns. My observation as a citizen revolves around the following: Changing the Sarkari (Government) mindset of corporation and safai (scavengers) workers– It was believed that there existed a “jagirdari” concept amongst the scavengers and this they used to blackmail people. This age old tradition was broken and this so called “jagirdari” blackmail was done away with. 2. Bring about a concept of collaboration between stake holders, like end users, collection teams, …
Having a good collection of books has proved to be a harrowing experience for me. Anybody who comes home likes to take a book along and being a teacher, I find it better for books to be read by people …