हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

 

कहने को तो मैं किसी से कहता नहीं

पर कभी कभी पन्नो पर है आ जाता

डर, जो मन के किसी कोने मे है छुपा

हर आहट पे मेरे कान मे फुसफुसाता

जो ये है, ये चला जायेगा, मुझको है बताता

मेरे सपनो का ढांचा, मेरी चिंताओं मे है ढहता

हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

क्या तूने सोचा था ऐसा वक़्त भी आएगा ?

की लाखों बिना समर के मरेंगे ?

भाई - भाई भी मिलने से डरेंगे ?

इस साल के कितने मंसूबे बनाये  थे ?

Vision 2020 के इश्तिहार कहाँ कहाँ चिपकाये थे ?

कितनी ज़िन्दगी जीनी इस साल तक टाली थी

कितनी तकलीफें तू इस कल के लिए था सहता ?

हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

पुराने दोस्तों की आज तुझे फिर याद आयी

एक Zoom call मे वो पुरानी पूरी टोली बुलाई

"कहाँ थे इतने दिन" की आवाज़ उठायी

"Touch मे रहना हमेशा" की फिर गुहार लगायी

ज़िन्दगी फिर से आड़े आ जाएगी ये किस से कहता ?

हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

आज मरने पे एक film star के, सबको चिंता है होती

Mental health और नशे का रोना रोज न्यूज़ है रोती

31 बच्चे आत्महत्या कर गए मेरे शहर मे पिछले साल

IIT entrance के लिए Adderall लेते , ऐसा है उनका हाल

क्यों उनके लिए justice के hashtag का ना आया उबाल ?

क्यों उनके माँ को छोड़ के किसी का आज एक आंसू नहीं बहता

हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

आज लोगो को कामवाली बाई का महत्व समझ मे आया

जिसको बीमार होने पे छुट्टी ली तो पगार कटेगी से डराया

आज उन्ही को तूने essential workers ठहराया ?

ऑपरेशन मे गड़बड़ होने पे जिनको पीटा

और fees ज़्यादा लेने पे उस Doctor को चोर बताया

अभी कुछ दिन के लिए भगवान का दर्ज़ा तू है देता

हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

शमशान मे हर इंसान वैरागी बनेगा

साथ कुछ नहीं जायेगा हर कोई यही कहेगा

आत्मा अमर है के भ्रम मे थोड़ी देर बहेगा

विपदा मे ईश्वर को याद भी करेगा

जीवन को नया मोड देने के सपने भी बुनेगा

फिर hike के लिए  boss चाहिए और school admission के लिए नेता

हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

पर इतना नकारात्मक होना भी ठीक नहीं

शायद इस गलती से हम कुछ सीखेंगे भी सही

इंसानियत की कहानियां भी बनेंगी, कुछ कही कुछ अनकही

तू भी तो टूट कर कितनी बार बना है

फिर से लड़ पाने पे तेरी पराजय, पराजय ना रही

अच्छे दिन भी तो वापस आएंगे

ये जिजीविषा इंसानों का हिस्सा है , ऐसा इतिहास है कहता

हमेशा के लिए कुछ नहीं रहता

 

Love in the times of Coronavirus

Shahbaz was lying on his bed, scrolling mindlessly on his laptop, thinking of which TV series to watch next when he heard a loud din. Curious, he put on his T Shirt lying on the chair, combed his disheveled hair with his fingers and stepped out in his room’s balcony. The complete housing society was out in their balconies; clapping, banging plates and cheering. He realized it was 5 PM, on March 22nd. The PM had asked people to come out and applaud the doctors, the nurses, the police and all other essential services workers who were risking their lives in this Covid-19 lockdown. It was the second day of the lockdown and this clapping was a welcome change from the monotony that his daily life was, even before the lockdown. He had come from Chandigarh two years ago, to work in an IT company in Bangalore. He did not have many friends in Bangalore and most of his waking hours were spent either working or in the gym or binge watching one TV series after another.

Smiling, he started clapping as well. He heard two voices from his left join in the clamor, the source was two women from his neighboring balcony across the stairwell, they were clapping and hooting and the older woman was banging a metal plate with a spoon. The older woman had short black hair with greys on the side, glasses with a big round frame and a big red bindi on her forehead. Shahbaz had difficulty guessing her age, she could have been anywhere between forties to sixties. The other woman with her a was a girl in her early twenties, she had shoulder length hair parted slightly from the side, full cheeks, a prominent sharp chin and big black eyes. She was taking a video on her phone, she pointed the camera towards Shahbaz and gestured him to cheer harder, and he did. Her camera and gaze had moved on but Shahbaz still kept looking at her, she was beautiful, and she had an infectious energy that seemed to move everyone on. It seemed to Shahbaz that ever since she came out on her balcony the applause was a little bit louder, the day brighter, even the sound of people banging metal, hooting and blowing conches sounded a bit musical, he felt he could stay in that moment forever. However, suddenly it all stopped, the applause subsided and people started going back inside their houses. The girl caught him staring at her and he got embarrassed. It seemed though like the girl wasn’t offended, she waved, said “Bye…… Happy Junta Curfew” and left. Shahbaz wanted to say a million things but he just waved with his mouth open and watched her disappear inside her house. He turned red and looked around nervously to check if someone saw him doing that, nobody had, cursing himself he came inside
.
That night he had trouble sleeping, he had watched four episodes of Big Bang Theory without registering anything. There were a million thoughts going through his head, how will he manage to work from home, how will he figure out his food, if his parents were worried, how will his sister manage, did he have enough groceries at home but most of this thoughts were occupied with the girl in the balcony. Who was she, had he seen her earlier, was she single, will he ever see her again, was there any way to communicate with her? Pondering all thisvhe fell into a restless sleep full of dreams. The next morning he woke up with his usual alarm and realized he was ready too early, his forty-five commute was not needed anymore. He made a makeshift office for himself in his room by dragging the dining table in his bedroom, since he wanted to be close to the balcony. He kept the balcony door open and fan on the minimum so he could hear if someone came out on his neighboring balcony, but no one did. He kept going out in the balcony to smoke, stretch or to rest his eyes every two hours but saw no one came out in his neighboring balcony. By the night he was feeling defeated. He had his dinner as Maggi while sitting in the balcony with his chair reclined and feet on the balustrade. He felt stupid and though these kind of love stories happened in the movie and not in real life. He felt terribly alone in that moment while gazing at the lights of the concrete jungle in front of him, wondering why the hell did he come to this city. He came inside as it was already midnight and it was getting chilly outside, he washed the dishes and plugged his earphone in his laptop to watch a few episodes of Big Bang Theory while he tried to sleep. He was half-asleep when he chuckled seeing that Sheldon changed the name of their Wi-Fi name to ‘Ha ha I’ve got you now’ to mess with Leonard who wasn’t giving him his apartment flag back. Smiling he turned on his side to sleep and suddenly, he was wide awake! He opened the list of Wi-Fi his laptop was catching, most of them were default device or ISP names but he saw one network named ‘Mukherjee House – 1’. This could be that girl’s house, he thought, judging from the signal strength and that girl’s mother looked Bengali. He pondered over what he was planning and hesitatingly took the next step. He changed his Wi-Fi’s name to ‘Hi This is Shahbaz The guy from 12-B Happy Junta Curfew’. With that he had rolled the dice and his life was now in the hands of the Wi-Fi Gods.

The next day as soon as he woke up, he scanned the name of all Wi-Fi networks; but they all looked the same as yesterday. He felt stupid to think a Sitcom trick would work in real life, most people just automatically connected to their home’s Wi-Fi and never even looked at other available networks. He got ready feeling miserable and started working, careful that no one should see his Wi-Fi name on screen sharing. Nevertheless, he was still hopeful, he spent the morning scanning the name of networks every chance he got and going out in the balcony whenever he could. His mobile phone rang when he was out in the balcony; he rushed in to see if it was someone from office, but it was his mother, he picked up the call but finished the call in two minutes saying he was very busy at work. This was partly true, today was a busy day in office, his manager was nervous, and he wanted everyone to deliver the work in time despite working from home. However, the real reason was that he did not want to answer where his sister was during the lockdown. Soon he got busy with work and forgot all about the Wi-Fi and the girl.

He woke up the next day to see his phone full of Whatapp messages, all his friend’s groups had suddenly become active, his sister had replied that she will come up with some excuse to explain why she isn’t home with him and even his office people created a Whatsapp group to stay in touch. He felt mixed emotions, he was happy to catch up with all his friends but also felt guilty about not keeping in touch till now. Ever since he had come to Bangalore he had lost touch with friends and family in Chandigarh. Every time he thought about Chandigarh he felt angry. He was angry with his father for forcing him to work in an IT company when he wanted to join the Army in the Engineering core. He was angry with this mother for not standing up for him. He was angry with his sister who took this opportunity to leave Chandigarh knowing their parents wouldn’t have sent her alone to study in Bangalore. He was angry with his friends for talking him out of rejecting the campus placement and trying for the Army without telling his parents. So he had nursed his anger by working for long hours and on the weights in the gym. He spent the morning chatting with his friends and logged into work a bit late. It was mid-day and he was behind in this work when tragedy struck, he lost his internet connection. He restarted the router multiple times but nothing worked. Finally, he switched on his Phone’s hotspot to connect, while searching for his Phone’s hotspot he saw a network name ‘Hi Happy Junta Curfew’, the Wi-Fi gods had finally smiled on him. Elated, he did a little dance sitting on his chair and changed his phone’s hotspot name to ‘Hi Again 9980299802 Happy Junta Curfew’. Within a few minutes he had a Whatsapp message on his phone ‘Hi. This is Debajyoti, from 12-C. This WiFi idea is very innovative". Shahbaz’s mouth went dry, he had not thought about what to do after she will reply. Panicking he thought of asking advice from his friend, from his sister, from strangers on the Internet but all of them would have taken too long. He typed and deleted so many messages and finally went with ‘Hi. This is Shahbaz from 12-B. Thank you’. They exchanged messages intermittently the whole day and he came to know that Debajyoti or Debo as everyone called her had just finished Graduation and was working in a Digital Marketing firm as an intern. She spent a lot of time on social media for her work, also liked to dance, do cross-fit and play Sudoku.  Shahbaz realized that the reason that they never seen each other was because she was never home on weekends and Shahbaz was never home on Weekdays. She was using this lockdown time to learn Search Engine Optimization, especially how to make pages stand out in SERPs. She was a Bengali by origin but was born and brought up here in Bangalore. She lived with her Mother and Father. Her father had just returned from Italy so their family was in designated quarantine for fifteen days. The authorities had stuck a poster outside their house and instructed the building security that they no one should enter or leave their home.

While the pandemic raged on outside, their love blossomed. It was a global tragedy, millions were infected and hundred thousand people had died but Shahbaz hadn’t been this ecstatic for years. He spent his days working and messaging Debo while his nights were spent talking to her till she would fall asleep on the phone. At this point, he would disconnect the call and go to sleep himself. He would also make a video of himself working out at home every morning and upload on Instagram what Debo had called her ‘daily eye candy’, it had initially made him blush but he had started liking it more and more with every day. He had always been an introvert but working out was something he knew and talking to Debo had made him come out of his shell. Talking to Debo was something like therapy for him. All his emotions had just gushed out, he told her about her parents and their forcing him to work in IT. They were from Chandigarh, a conservative Sikh family. His father was a strict disciplinarian who loved him but was never around due to postings in the Army. His mother was always busy taking care of the two kids and her job as a teacher. His sister had always been a rebel. She had a boyfriend that she was living with but had not told their parents. Debo had just listened and asked some questions, she never got bored or asked him to shut up or made fun of him. That made her even more endearing to him. Every time he spoke of something, it reminded her of a meme or gif that she would send it to the next day. Due to her work, she had an encyclopedic knowledge of Memes, Trending topics and Viral challenges and would often speak about them.

It was the eighth day of the lockdown when he ran out of Maggi. He did not have anything in his house that he could use with his very limited culinary skills. He tried ordering food from outside but no one was delivering to his building because it was in quarantine. Messaging with Debo he casually asked if she knew any place that was still delivering food because he did not have anything in his house to eat. She got concerned and said she will ask her mom to prepare an extra person’s food and keep outside his house, he could take it after fifteen minutes after she was gone. Shahbaz tried to refuse but in the end, he had to give in. So that became their daily ritual, she would keep the plates outside his house for lunch and take them back at dinner time and keep another ones and Shahbaz would place little origami flowers made from old newspaper that he learned off YouTube, because his mother had asked never to return empty plates. There were ants in his food the first time when he had picked up but he did not tell it to Debo and just ate it anyways and came later and sprayed the area outside their homes with an insect killer.

Debo wasn’t on any social media and even used to view Shahbaz’s Instagram page from her work account. One day when he asked why she initially tried to brush it off but then stopped and sighed. “I guess I have to tell you eventually, I mean I have asked about your life, I think it is time for me to tell you about mine”. She took a pause and continued, “I used to date this guy in college, his name was Srikanth. We dated for three years, but near the end of college, he started getting increasingly possessive. He started making plans for me about what I should do after college, what I should wear when I go to meet his parents, how I will live in his house after we got married, even though we had never even discussed getting married. In the end, it got so suffocating that I broke up with him but then things got even worse..” she trailed off. Shahbaz just listened with bated breath, too afraid to say anything. He thought he probably hit her or something, but what followed was worse.  Debo continued with pain in her voice “After we broke up he apologized and said he would change but when I refused he threatened me with putting my intimate photos online. I sent him some photos on Snapchat when we were dating. I thought it was not possible to save them but he said that he had somehow saved them and insisted he still had them”. Debo had started sobbing now “I was too afraid to say anything to him or to think clearly. I just cried and cried for days, shut in my room. I pleaded with him not to do anything like that but he said he would only not do it if I got back together with him. Finally, I gathered the courage to talk to my parents. I was afraid of getting slapped, of them taking away my freedom, of them putting all sort of restrictions, perhaps they even try to get me married off abroad like that girl from DPS MMS. Instead, my father just put his arm around me and said it was not my fault and not to worry about it. My mother got me glass of water and asked me to stop crying. That night they did not leave my side until I fell asleep. The next morning my father called his lawyer friend who called Srikanth’s parents, threatening them with legal action if he put up any photos of me. And that was the end of it; I did not hear from him afterwards, I deleted all my social media profiles that day and have been away from it since then”. She just broke down crying after that. Shahbaz just seethed with anger, he felt this rage inside of him that was unknown of him. He blurted out “I will kill that guy if I ever get my hands on him. But it was so stupid of you to send him your intimate photos”. Debo was taken aback, “What?” she said. “Do you think this was somehow my fault?” Shahbaz just realized what he had said, he tried to say that he did not mean that but it was too late, the line went dead on the other side. He tried to call her multiple times but she did not pick up and soon her phone was switched off. Shahbaz felt mad with anger, he felt like punching the walls, he felt like killing that guy, he felt like killing himself, he felt he was trapped in this house and walls were closing in, so much so that  he could not breathe and his scream was stuck in his throat. That was the longest night he had seen, he was still awake when the morning light came.

He messaged Debo on Whatsapp several times the next day but his messages were not getting delivered. He resigned himself to his fate and he dragged himself to his computer to login and work but he felt lost. It was midday and he was on an office call but he was mentally absent, he closed and opened his eyes to see if he could wake up from this nightmare. But when he opened his eyes he was still there in the reality when Debo was not talking to him, he held his head in his hands and brushed his fingers in his unkempt hair when he heard a distinct sound. Somebody had kept a metal plate outside his door. Excusing himself from the office call he ran towards the door, but it was too late, there was food kept outside his door but the person was gone. He felt like running towards Debo’s door but he did not want to create a scene. He picked up the food and came inside. He tried to eat later that afternoon but he could not and tears started falling from his eyes. He realized that last time he had cried was his first day in this job, when it had dawned on him that he had lost his last chance to get into the army. He had not cried when he did not get through NDA, he had not cried when they made him stand naked as part of the first year Engineering ragging, he had not cried when he crushed his leg in a motorcycle accident which put a rod and the seven screws in his leg. However, he cried now, his tears dropped on the paper he tried to make an origami flower out of. That night his sister called to check on him and he just broke down crying, he told her what happened and his sister for the first time sympathized with him. She reassured him that all wasn’t lost and gave him such an outrageous idea that he thought it might just work.

The next morning instead of his usual workout video, he got in front of the camera he held a placard on his hand which read - I am sorry. I never thought that any of what happened was your fault. I do not always know the right thing to say, and I don’t deserve you. I know I have lost you but nevertheless I want to say that I am stupid to even suggest it that it was”. Then he moved away from the camera and came back with sister’s red bindi on his forehead and danced on the song that Debo hated the most, Genda Phool from Badshah, mouthing the word Debo when it was heard on the song. He uploaded that video and in a few minutes saw that this phone had lit up. It was a message from Debo which said “You are right, you are stupid. One fight does not mean you have lost me”. The world where 160 thousand had just died of an unstoppable virus was a good place again.

The days went on like that, she introduced him to her friends over a Zoom call and he introduced her to his sister who was very excited to hear that finally he had a girlfriend. Both of them counted the days to the end of Debo’s fifteen day mandatory quarantine when they could actually see each other in person. They dreamt together of a world where they could be together and outside. Debo told him about how she would like to go to Gullu’s chaat with him and all her friends and Shahbaz told her this road slightly outside Bangalore which had a canopy of Gulmohar trees, so if you looked up the sky looked red and if the wind was just mild enough you felt you were being showered with flowers.

The day that Shahbaz had waited had arrived, Debo’s quarantine had ended, government officials had come and removed the quarantine poster from their homes this morning and no one of her family had shown any symptoms. Her parents were going out today to buy groceries at 5 PM. Shahbaz kept looking at his watch the whole day, counting down the hours before go out and meet her. He worked at a frantic pace to finish his work and wrap up for the day. At 4 he got up and got ready, ironed his cleanest shirt, cleaned his sneakers, went extra crazy on the deodorant and popped a mint chewing gum. At 5 he walked out of his apartment and closed the door softly after him, his heart was pounding, his feet were shaky and he felt himself sweating. He had rehearsed a lot many lines but when he knocked on her door gingerly he felt blank. Her mom had opened the door, “Good evening hello Aunty, I am Shahbaz” he mumbled and felt like kicking himself for that stupid greeting. But Debo’s mom gave him the biggest smile “ Aah, so you are Shahbaz, come in beta, I hoped you liked my food. I don’t know any Punjabi cooking so I made whatever Debo wanted to eat. She made a gesture to sit in the sofa and went out of the living room. Shahbaz wondered whether to sit or stand, and then decided to sit. As soon as he was sitting down her father entered the room, he stood up to shake his hand but her father folded his hands for Namaste and said that is what we need to practice now. Embarrassed again he said Namaste and nervously smiled, he could feel sweat beading on his forehead but thought it would be weird to wipe it now. Thankfully Debo entered the room within minutes and started laughing as soon as she saw him. “My god, you are dressed so formally” she said laughing, “You are not going for an interview”. She was wearing a t-shirt and sweatpants but still looked beautiful somehow. Shahbaz realized he was staring at her in front of her dad and quickly lowered his eyes. “Hi”, he said, and waved his hand “I just wore whatever I had” and chucked nervously. He was thinking of what to say next but her mom came from inside the house carrying her purse and two masks in hand, they were leaving for the supermarket to buy groceries.

“You sound different on the phone”, she said, as she took his hand and made him sit down next to her on the sofa. “So Mr. Tik Tok what did you plan on doing when we met for the first time”, she asked mischievously. “Nothing, I didn’t think about it all”, Shahbaz lied. He had thought of a million different things and but was too shy to say it. “Ok then I will go with what I had planned on doing” and leaned in for a kiss. Then she coughed. And Shahbaz thought “Fuck this, I am out of here”

Project ke gaddaro ko..... Escalation maaro saalon ko !!!

 It was a normal Monday in an IT company. Actually, there are no normal Mondays in an IT company, Mondays are a time while half the company is on sick leave and other half hates themselves for not having enough leaves to be on sick leave. People are hung over, frustrated, sleepy, looking for other jobs and basically just tired of it all. And when people are like that, something’s gotta give.

09:00 AM:

 It was our monthly meeting when I, as the lead of testing team, placed the figures in front of everyone in our project for Bharat Textiles. We had found 198 bugs in our last testing cycle, which was a very high number. I said the quality of the development was very bad and we were no longer ISO 9000 compliant. The lead of the development team took offense at this. He got up from his seat in the meeting room, caught my collar and screamed “Agar project se itni problem hai to Lahore foods ke project mae chale jao! Tum log Anti-project ho!”.

I was dumb founded. Why would he say something like that? Finding a bug is the first step in solving it, there is nothing wrong in saying there is a problem in the project. All projects do. But my bigger issue was that if I have a problem with the project why am I not being suggested the Coca Cola project or British Telecom project? Where there is an onsite, the project is run well, everybody gets to leave office on time and most importantly, you get to talk to white women.

 10:00 AM:

This disease was spreading faster than Coronavirus. Two of my team members were stopped from entering the ODC…… Before I go any further, I think I should explain what an ODC is. An ODC or Offshore Development Centre is virtual office of another company, which has outsourced its software development offshore to an IT company that has a deep talent pool, and lower cost of operations. Or in other words, where you pass off your shit work to cheap labour but also want to retain control over the data. So a ODC is access controlled, only people who are working in that project can enter. Two of my team members were stopped from entering the ODC and asked to show their ID cards for granting access, but instead of showing their ID they started sloganeering “Hum Kaagaz Nahi Dikhayenge, Security-Guard Aake Jayenge, Hum Kaagaz Nahi Dikhayenge”. I rushed in to see what the problem is and the revolutionaries asked me instead where my degree is. I said I don’t have it with me right now, but it was definitely verified at the time of my joining. At which they laughed and said “In this project where the team leads cannot produce degree you are asking me to produce an ID card to prove I am a team member?” After which they pushed past me and went inside.

 11:00 AM:

The situation almost came to blows. It was the time of our daily stand up call and one person was sitting down for it in the meeting room. Our business analyst was enraged to see this. He confronted him immediately and told him that if he cannot stand for 15 minutes for the stand up call then how can he care about the project. The other person replied that he was just tired and what difference does it make if he did not stand. This enraged our business analyst, he pounded the table with his fist and growled “This is the problem with you people, you do not care about the project at all. Are you a spy from Karachi foods project here to delete all our data? Our soldiers are standing in -40º C in Siachen and you cannot stand for 15 minutes?”. He stormed out of the meeting room while our PM (Project Manager) stood mute but taking notes. Our business analyst could have made his point much stronger only if he was not frequently late to work, or littering the cubicle, or cheating on his time sheet filling extra hours, or being a letch with the women in the project. But of course, just standing for the stand up call made him a stand-up employee. However, I was more worried about the PM taking notes at the Siachen comment.

 12:00 AM:

I had just returned from my coffee break when I saw an email waiting for me from the client. Apparently our last testing cycle wasn’t very good and a lot of bugs were not caught. I rubbed my forehead and sighed, and started walking to the desk of the person responsible. I asked him why the quality of his work was so bad? Instead of answering me, he asked me a question “What about the day when the development team did not finish their work on time? What about the Friday when you reached office late? What did you do when Rajesh died from a heart attack and did not finish his assigned work? Did you ask any questions when Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of Kashmir by JKLF?” None of these reasons was an excuse for his bad work but he thought he had answered me sufficiently, so he turned his chair before I could say that I was 5 years old at the time of Kashmiri Pandits’ exodus.

 1:00 PM:

“Finally, lunch time” I thought to myself and pictured a plate of steaming mutton biryani and a glass of chilled Coca-Cola. So what if I will die at 45 with this diet, I told myself, death cannot be worse than this life in this project. As I moved towards the exit of the ODC I saw a small crowd had gathered and no one was getting out. Our PM was standing there with a dour face and a sour expression. “Mitron”, he said in his loud and booming voice, “Our soldiers are fighting in Siachen, do you think they are getting lunch breaks of 30 minutes every day? If they can do without it, so can you. You must forego your lunch and keep working. Bharat Textiles mata kee jai!” With this, he corralled us back into our cubicles and left to meet another project’s PM. People were murmuring and there was already a blame-game started about who was responsible for this.

 2:00 PM:

The email that will light this powder keg came in. Our Deputy PM sent an email that Mechanical Engineers will inducted in the project with just 15 days of training instead of the usual 1 month training. Being a mechanical engineer myself, I did not think much about it and I welcomed the 2nd point in the email that the PM wants to create of list of all project members. It would be good to have a list of people, I thought, every time we had to send an email for filling time sheets or inviting for someone’s farewell we had to go cubicle to cubicle asking emails of everyone. But a loud cry came from my neighbouring cubicle where two guys who were Computer Engineers, said that it was discrimination against them. Our Deputy PM who was also a Mechanical engineer, rushed into that cubicle to calm them down. He said it was not discriminatory; it was just to help Mechanical engineers. Computer engineers had 150 other projects to go to but Mechanical engineers had only 1. Before they could say anything else, he added that if they did not support this they were Anti-project. One girl who was a Civil engineer stood up to ask that what about Civil engineers, they were also a minority in all projects, but she was asked to shut up, her ID card was checked again and she was asked to submit her code for review immediately.

 3:00 PM:

The situation was worsening by the minute, people were quickly taking sides, all civil discourse had stopped and the people from JavaScript Network Uniformator (JNU) were creating a ruckus about everything. In addition, to make matters worse a girl from the HR department entered the ODC to support the JavaScript Network Uniformator (JNU) gang. Since she was an HR, the normal rules did not apply to her and anyway she needed to fulfil her KPIs by successfully intervening in eight issues a quarter. She came in very combative and first, took a photo with the JavaScript Network Uniformator (JNU) gang. Then wrote an email to the PM that how he was supposed to run a software project even though she was no way qualified about it. Lastly, she wrote about this situation in her post on Linkedin title ‘How the PM is driving down Employee Value Proposition in Millennials who are undertaking Digital Transformation for 4th Generation Companies’ and then left after instigating both sides.

 4:00 PM:
Since we were locked in and I was getting a migraine due to hypoglycaemia I thought to go to get a coffee. Two girls who were Computer engineers had blocked the coffee machine. They were on dharna and they wanted the plan of having a list of project members dropped. They said it was a ruse by the project management to discriminate against the Computer engineers and they were not sure how the management would use this data. These were the same girls who shared their fingerprint with Xiaomi, their location with Google, their relatives and baby’s photos with Instagram, their home address with Facebook and the inside of their bathroom with Tik Tok. One of the girls had shared her entire travel history, her parent’s passport numbers and her last 6 month’s bank statement with the UK government when applying for a tourist visa, just to get a photo with red telephone booth. However, she didn’t want to want to share her data with her own project. However, it was not possible to get through them, so defeated I came back to my desk,

5:00 PM:

I was hungry, having a splitting headache and my cubicle was littered with wrappers and Tirupati laddu crumbs. Email forwards and Skype messages were flying in with fake news from both sides. If that wasn’t enough, my computer got super slow again, each click was taking minutes to work and applications were taking ages to load. Frustrated I got up to ask for local IT support. The technician came to my desk and after poking around my computer for 2 minutes, he said the network is jammed. High data volume on the network is causing these latency issues. I asked so what can be done and he shrugged and replied “Nothing. Ye aas paas ke project se ghuspaithiye aa gaye jo pura network barbaad kar rahe hai”. I was surprised at that answer. I asked him but I am having the same problem since a month, the last week you said I just needed to reboot and wait, the week before that you said it was because of neighbouring projects using our bandwidth and the week before that it was because of raahu kaal. How are you suddenly blaming it on ghuspaithiye . He called me an Anti-Project and left.

 6:00 PM:

 At last this hellish day was at an end, it was time for me to go. There was a lot of commotion, the Mechanical Enginers and Computer engineers were at each other’s throats. The development team was blaming testing team for everything and vice versa. With a lot of effort I made way to the exit. But the exit door was again blocked by the PM. “Mitron”, he said “where are you going? The soldiers in Siachen do not leave their posts at 6. Why should you? You should continue your work. The previous PMs ran the project badly for 60 quarters, it will take 120 quarters for me to correct it by making you working longer hours with lesser pay. Anybody who has anything to say at this is an Anti-Project. Bharat Textiles mata kee jai!”. At this point I shouted “Project ke gaddaro ko… Goli maaro saalon ko!” and strangled the PM with my mouse cable. I am sure revisionists 50 version releases down the line will call me a project-bhakt and a true Mechanical Engineer for murdering someone.

I am a honest, sycophanic, workaholic man but my boss still doesn't love me

Dear Abby,


I am an honest and hardworking man, but somehow I am not being recognized in my workplace and my boss totally ignores me. Let me tell you my story and then you can advise what more do I need to do.

It was September 2013, right before my 27th birthday, when I decided that the hair around my temples had sufficiently greyed out to make it as a measure of my dedication to work. I had been grinning and looking sideways at my team member Naveen and his jet black hair for days, slowly working on my conversation starter with my boss that how office stress has prematurely greyed my hair, because I care about my job so much. I rolled in early to office for my birthday to prove that I don’t put my one special day in a year before my work and in fact I was going to work extra-long hours on my birthday. But as soon as I entered, I saw everyone was gathered around Naveen’s desk and there were people on their toes trying to look over other’s shoulder. Worried, I rushed to his desk to see that Naveen was standing there completely bald, apparently that man had lost his hair in the first year of his working and was wearing a wig till now. He proudly proclaimed that his work stress caused Telogen Effluvium, thus total hair loss. He announced pretty loudly that any man or woman working here with hair is not really serious about his job. The boss entered the circle, patted him on his bald head and asked to put that in his yearly achievement, they are looking for more people like him in the senior positions. That year on Diwali late in the night when we were all waiting for someone else to leave first, the email came in, Naveen was being promoted and moving out of team.

Things started looking up when a new guy Satvinder who asked everyone to call him Sandy, was just hired to replace Naveen. That guy was thin, had lots of hair and didn’t understand office politics. That guy definitely would have been chewed and spit out in a few months. But this time I did not want to take any chances, I wanted to clearly look like the harder working of the two. So I started eating only junk food, not doing any exercise and worrying even more. All this work was paying off, I was 13 Kgs overweight and my blood pressure was 145/95. I just wanted it to hit the magic number of 150/100 before starting talking to everyone around and maybe even pin a print out of my BP on my work desk. But that bastard Sandy got lucky first! He had a heart attack and died. Apparently he preferred his butter chicken with extra butter, used to have a samosa every time he went for tea, which was 5 times in a working day, was popping gulab jamun like tic tacs and was worried even more than me to impress the boss. And the boss was clearly impressed; Sandy was mentioned in the quarterly town hall in the young achievers list and was named employee of the year posthumously.

I realized that I cannot cut it in a such a dynamic and high achieving work place so I switched jobs. And as my luck would have it, the new place was even worse. They had what the boss used to call a ‘start up culture’, even though it just meant very long hours and working on weekends and holidays just like my previous office but here they did on standing desks while wearing casual clothes. The place was full of fat twenty-five somethings, we had chai latte instead of tea in our in-house cafe and every week we had to compulsorily do a holistic wellness class after we finish work, which usually meant staying past midnight on Friday.

In one of this wellness class they took away my first bragging point, that Diabetes was genetically passed. After that whenever I talked about it, people very rudely pointed out that my high blood sugar is not something I achieved but passed on to me from my parents. Things got even worse after that, I was used to the old skipping lunch routine or eating at your desk to show that you are saving time. But the new kids were taking it to next level, they would proudly say before lunch that they were going to miss dinner as they were pulling all-nighters or just “crunching” as they would like to call it. One guy even advertised that how he came up with some sort of protein kale quinoa shake, of which if you drink one, it is enough to go through the day without any food, and to top, that no bathroom breaks either. These new kids were even impinging on the long standing gentleman’s code that the last person to leave the office is clearly the hardest worker and thus needs to be valued by the boss. They were now sending emails at 3 AM in the night from their homes, setting up meetings on Sunday morning from their phone’s Outlook and suggesting boss to add everyone in a Whatsapp group so no one can ever be offline.

I would have been glad, if these invasive technologies which let’s work permeate every aspect of our life was the worst thing these new kids brought. But they brought something else, something worse, THE DIVORCE CULTURE! It was a long standing culture of our country that you have to stay with the person you married till death or immolation for dowry does you apart. Every hard working man and woman was ignoring their spouses and kids, this was a given, nobody talked about it, nobody needed a document from a court to prove it.

I still remember that Monday when I was sitting in cafeteria abusing my juniors who had asked for leaves. I had taken out my laptop and fished out the email from my appreciation email folder, where HR had said that 18 out of my 20 leaves are lapsing and had copied my boss. My boss, being my boss had replied “great job team, next year let’s aim for all 20”. As I was looking at my dumb founded sub-ordinates I saw Vijay Prakash or VP as he asked everyone to call him, taking a selfie with an official looking document in his hand. I jeered at him asking if that this was one of those worthless certification and was he going to change his name to PMP VP in his Linkedin profile. He stormed to my table and slammed his divorce file on the table. He challenged the entire crowd in the cafeteria to spend so much time in office that their spouse decides that even going through the Indian legal system and hearing the taunts of Indian society for a lifetime is better than their marriage. Needless to say, VP just had to put “Divorced due to workalholism” in his yearly self-review and he got the highest rating that year.

Abby, time and time again I have tried to show I am the best worker in office by being fat and grey haired, panting when they make you take the stairs in the fire drill, by missing Holi, Diwali and all festivals because of being in office, counting calendar days instead of working days for deadlines, by generally ignoring my family life for years, by sending needless status emails to everyone copying my boss after midnight, never participating in any of team activities, always leaving after the boss, using the latest jargon and lastly being exhausted all the time. But I have failed miserably. What more do I need to do?

Your truly,
Unlucky hard worker.


Dear Unlucky hard worker,

Have you tried to produce good work instead? So you would be judged on that and nothing else.

With love,
Abby


While this is clearly satire. There is nothing funny about the Indian workplace situations. More than 50% people are stressed and 8% people are downright suicidal. Google it if you think I’m exaggerating. There is no study which has shown that stressing people or pressuring them to work harder has resulted in growth. When forced to work longer people will either find ways to kill time in office or take time off later faking sickness or personal emergencies. There is no secret on why so many of us fall sick on Mondays. We (most people in my social group) have started moving to junior management positions, we are in a position to make a change. Don’t follow the sick culture of staying late and working on weekends and don’t make your juniors do it. Don’t mistake having a life outside work as lack of passion for work. Encourage the gym goers. Don’t say shit to freshers like “this is your time to learn, don’t go home so early”, “Where are you going so soon? You don’t even have a family”. Don’t do shitty things like making them wait whole day for an input and they give that at 7 PM and expect them to finish the work the same day. Remember how this shit felt like when you were in their position. Don’t get into the ragging mindset – “It was done to me, so I will do it to others”. That is what child sex abusers do! Remember how you first went abroad and appreciated their work culture? That everyone leaves office at 6 sharp, that no one calls on cellphones for work, that no one expects you to work on weekends? We can have it here in India. Don’t say: “Oh this will never work in India”. It will, the only thing not making it work are the asshole people like us.

Oh yes, the picture above is Flipkart's promotion photo of their sale, where they are proudly displaying that they are going to make their employees sleep on rented uncomfortable mattresses, of course as India has no overtime so probably they are getting nothing out of it. Cheers to India Inc!

ज़िंदगी हिसाब मांगती है

ज़िंदगी की इस भाग दौड़ में
मेरी कलम ठहर सी गयी है।
शब्दों की आंधी जो अंदर थी मेरे ,
धीरे धीरे ठंडी आहों में बदल गयी है।
 
कभी कभी Google Maps से ही ,इस जीवन की राह पूछता हूँ।
Directions तो मैं खुद ढूंढ लूंगा,
उस से सिर्फ जाना कहाँ है ये पूछता हूँ।
 
सुनता हूँ स्तब्ध दोस्तों के जलसो में अब,
तेरा EMI कितना ? तू कितनी Insurance भरता है ?
इन पलो को फिर से रंगीन करने लिए 
क्या कोई Instagram फ़िल्टर लगता है ?
 
दे नहीं पाया आज दिन के १० पल भी बीवी को
शायद कल iPhone X से कमी पूरी कर पाऊं।
१० साल का प्यार १० हज़ार के लिए गिरवी है
उसको बचाने के लिए कौनसा discount coupon लगाऊं?

माँ मेरी भेजे टूलिप्स की तस्वीरें ख़ुशी से
अपने दोस्तों को Facebook पे दिखाती है।
साल मै ५ दिन से ज़यादा मिल नहीं पाती,
ये दुखड़ा न जाने किसे, किस App पे बताती है ? 
 
आज फिर आगे बढ़ने के लिए झूट बोला,
कहीं करी चापलूसी तो किसी को टांग अड़ाई।
आत्मा शायद रोज़ थोड़ी मरती गयी लेकिन,
उसकी दुरुस्ती के लिए कौनसा Fitbit है भाई ? 

ऐसे मिली तरक्की की खबर
अपने बाप को न जाने कैसे सुनाऊंगा।
जिसने हमेशा बोला , बुरा काम न करना
उसको इसके बारे मे Whatsapp तो नहीं कर पाउँगा।
 
हम हाथों में लिए बैठे है चाबियां
अपने पिंजरों की, कोई तो हमको बताएं।
एक जिसके आदी है और दूसरा जो सपना है
उस यात्रा के लिए कोई तो एक Uber मंगवाए 


कुछ चीखें है दबी अंदर, जो पन्ने तक
आने के लिए आज फिर से शराब मांगती है
बोझ समझकर फैंक दिए थे कहीं 
ये आँखें वापस वो अपने ख्वाब मांगती है।  
कहने को नदी की तरह स्वछंद पर फिर भी 
दो किनारो के बीच फंसे, ज़िंदगी आज सैलाब मांगती है।
कितने महंगे पड़े ये चंद सिक्के 
मेरी आत्मा एक Excel में इसका हिसाब मांगती है 

 

The NRI Oath

 

 

I never thought much about NRIs when I was kid, my only experience with them were the Bollywood caricatures like the helpless cousin who needs saving by the street-smartness of the hero or the cartoonish villains in Vishawatama who were plotting something nefarious against my motherland along with some vague ‘Videshi Taakatein’ and lately the spoiled, out of touch with his/her Indian-ness, cigarette smoking, hard drinking, partying brat like in Namaste London or Pardes who needed to be remedied by the hero. My first tryst with an actual NRI was when my uncle returned from Nigeria, which I know now isn’t the hottest of the destinations but still it was pretty exotic to us. He used to buy all us cousins video game cartridges and ice cream and used to have imported whiskey for my dad. He got a bath tub built, got an AC and joked about putting a music system with a speaker in each room when all as had in our homes were those BPL 2-in-1 cassette players. In short he was doing everything right by the…… <drumroll> …… NRI Oath. Something that I didn’t know existed but I had to take myself one after moving to Spain for work. A binding oath they make us swear if we are ever outside India or its territorial waters for more than 182 days in a financial year.

The NRI Oath or just ‘The Oath’ is stricter that Nights watch vows, more sacred than any pinky promise and more lasting than the Wolfpack promise the four guys made on the top of the Caesars Palace hotel on that fateful night in Las Vegas. The Oath compels us (NRIs) to -

Be more Indian outside India then we were ever inside it. In India we always used 26^th January as the day to sleep late and run over to Big Bazaar for discounted shopping. However outside India we need to have get together parties, go to flag hoisting and send each other messages congratulating each other on the Republic day even though we still do not understand its significance. Out here we have to force our children to learn Bharatnatyam and memorize Veds, go extra-ethnic-wear on Diwali and start blog on traditional Indian dishes. We also have to watch documentaries on ancient Indic civilizations and recommend reading ‘A Search in Secret India’ to each other. So in short, none of the things we bothered doing while we were in India, before the Oath compelled us to.

After spending two weeks living in a new country, we have to become an expert on it. We need to have them all figured out and be happy to disburse that advice that to any other NRI who has come to the country one day after us. Ask us (or don’t ask us) and we have the low down for each country – Americans are just stupid consumerists, Germans are cold hearted bastards, Spanish are lazy and Canadians need to develop more industry. All this gyan comes streaming down from people who cannot even speak the local language (except if it’s English) and will be hard pressed to tell you the name of the elected official of their city/state. There is no getting around the obligation of that solemn vow you took.

We need to blame all of our problems in a different country on racism. Got entry refused to a club because you were 7 badly dressed guys? The bouncer has to be racist. A restaurant didn’t let you use the restroom for free? The waitress needs to be proclaimed racist. The bus driver didn’t answer you properly because he did not speak English? Take down his badge number and put it on Facebook how you had a harrowing experience because of racism. But remember to hold on to your wallet tightly if there is Black guy behind you in the subway and never enter those Latino ghettos because that’s where all the drug dealers live. We act like that not because we are idiots, pseudo-racists or never learned to deal with foreigners because we don’t have any in India, it is because and only because of the coercion of the NRI Oath.

Whenever we are in a formal Indian gathering or in an Indian community group on social media, we try to outdo each other on praising India. We say things like India has the oldest civilization, the zero and plastic surgery was invented in India. We had buttons and space ships in the ancient India (serious theory, google Vimanas + Ancient Aliens). We are the biggest democracy and have the second largest army. In fact we all love India so much that none of us want to go back. People back in India are clamoring to get visas to developed countries (and when we use this phrase it automatically means that India is not), people who have visas are trying to get permanent residencies and people who are permanent residents are trying to get their country’s passport. But yet, our country is the greatest, we just don’t want to spoil such a great place by our humble presence. This is the first doctrine of the Oath, love your country, be jingoistic about it, send money to even terrorist organizations in it (Khalistan separation for example, read the Wikipedia Article) but try extra hard to get the citizenship of another country.

We are pro-immigration only till the point that we are through the door. The NRIs who got US citizenship are against people getting more Green Cards and the people who have Green Cards are worried about Indians getting too many H1-B visas because is ruining the job market. The people who have Australia PRs are against more people getting Visa 186. And no NRI in Europe wants to have the Syrian immigrants to be admitted. The real talk between the enlightened, globe-trotting, politically conscious desis in US is always about H1b, premium processing, RFE, Visa denials and nothing else. However, if you ever talk about how Trump coming in as President has reduced onsite opportunities in India and you can see the crowd go wild about how disgusting that it and how immigration is beneficial for every country. All because of the Oath, all because the Oath.

We like to bash Bollywood movies every chance we get. How the song-dance routine is so cheesy, how they don’t have a proper plot and how they are not trying to tackle bold subjects. We always laugh at Salman movies and always make absolutely clear to everyone we meet that we are not amongst those Indians who like his movies. We go on and on about how progressive French cinema is and or actually West End is where the true actors are but the moment the next SRK movie releases we are all ready to drive 100 KMs to see it. Because this what the Oath obliges us to do it.

 

 

 

 

It is absolutely needed for us to buy a 2^nd hand or 3^rd hand Mercedes or Audi as soon as we arrive, because it is much cheaper to buy them there. From there onwards the regulations state that it is needed to get our money’s worth out it as quickly as possible with Facebook and WhatsApp DPs pictures having captions like ‘The man and the machine’, ‘The beauty’ etc. as soon as possible. Before the maintenance and fuel bills start hitting you and you realize that there is a reason the Americans and Europeans buy Toyota Camrys and VW Polos. A special by law also indicates that if you are renting the car between four people then, firstly it has to be a BMW X5 or Jaguar F type convertible and secondly and most importantly all four people need to have a picture taken with them sitting in the driver’s seat. There was an amendment after the Y2K that simply getting a photo taken standing near someone else’s Porsche or Hummer is no longer allowed.

Every time anybody acts in an even the slightest non inclusive manner, we are needed to criticize that. It is required that we hate the fact when the Spaniards switch to Spanish at lunch time in the office even we are sitting with them. We hate ever more when we see the Germans want to have some private conversation in German in a business meeting when we are there. We especially hate it when the English use Cockney slang even in a joke because it just is difficult to understand even though it is English. But the moment one Tamil guys meeting another Tamil guys in a Diwali mela, let’s just say that it not their problem if the rest of the India cannot speak Tamil. And it is absolutely needed to abuse other non-Indians in Hindi in front of them or pass lecherous comments about women, totally oblivious of the fact that 93% of all communication is non-verbal. We are not in the slightest bit having-double-standards-linguicist-twats, it is just the rudiment of the Oath.

 

 

We save all our holidays and money for our annual trip to India, but we do nothing but crib throughout it. “Oh my god this country has so much pollution. Oh my god look at the traffic. Oh my god this country is so dirty. I hate the fact that I have to meet so many relatives here.” We pound our fellow countrymen over the head so much that they know that the next sentence out of our mouth is going to start with “You know in the US/UK/Germany we …..”. Nobody of us talks about the longing for family and familiarity, the alienation, the anxiety, the constant feeling that we are doing something wrong, is everyone secretly and inwardly laughing at us, thinking of us less developed. And none of us especially talks about how much we look forward to this India trip. It is not because we like to be so irritatingly predictive and predictively irritating, it is because the nature of the Oath is so.

3 years in Spain, or what I learned about Happiness, Time and India

 

  

Happiness is a strange thing, for some it is an abstract concept, for some it is a fleeting emotion and for some people like me it is a state of being.

The house in Bangalore

Before I go on, let’s have a small thought experiment. Take one person who has a 2 bedroom apartment in the center of the city, has a car, a maid to do his cleaning and washing, decent enough salary, goes to a fancy pub every weekend, cooks only 5 times a week and eats out the rest of the time and lives with his beautiful wife. Now juxtapose him with another guy, who lives alone in a studio in a suburb, doesn’t have a car but walks everywhere or takes public transport, cooks all 3 meals seven days a week, cleans his own apartment, irons his own clothes, lives in a country where he doesn’t know a single person and cannot speak the language of. Now tell me who amongst these two will be happier?




Since I have asked such a seemingly obvious question, you know it is a trick question. You know the answer is that the second guy is happier, and this is right.

5 days before I
moved to Spain

After moving to Spain

When I was about to move to Spain I was 77 kgs, I ate and drank too much and had difficulty sleeping at night. My job even though a menial one was stressful and I spent more than 13 hours at work if I include the commute. I ended up working on a lot of weekends then bunking a lot of Monday with fake sick leaves. In addition to all this was the stress of getting a visa for Spain. I was miserable with no real reason for it. No financial difficulties, no fledgling business, no cheating girlfriend, no tough boss; really none of usual reasons of unhappiness.








The studio in Madrid

Cut to when I moved to Madrid. I worked 9 hours a day, left early on Fridays, had a half an hour commute. I ran every day, lost the excess 7 kgs and slept like a baby in my tiny apartment. Every day was a new day full of new things, each street that I took was a new discovery. Once I rode public buses in the city aimlessly just to see the city. I took out time to see the sunrise, the sunset and the night sky. I took out time for reading, for writing, for doing all the things that I thought I would do when I will have time.


 

 

The sea view room

Slowly it dawned on me that happiness has nothing to do with material things, on whether you have a car or not, whether you have a small house or a big one, whether you have 46 piece cutlery set or you eat out of the pot. It is something intrinsic. It is something inside you. You and you alone can make yourself happy. It is not dependent on your salary, your spouse, your designation in your job or any of the usual things that people associate happiness with. My most memorable vacation is not when I stayed in a 4 star hotel on Costa del Sol (yes, the place they go in ‘Zindagi na milegi dobara’) with a sea view room and champagne for breakfast. Instead, it a vacation I took in Lisbon where I stayed in a hostel, slept in a bunk bed in a dorm, ate a one Euro ham & cheese sandwich for breakfast and rode the tram to buy a beer to have it on a street bench.



My moving to Spain also made me realize a two other things. One is about time. I travelled a lot, to villages nearby, to a forest close to my house and to every other city that is everyone’s European checklist. When my wife was here a for a month’s vacation we covered Amsterdam, Paris, Rome, Switzerland and Ibiza in a month! Because we knew that our time was limited. This sense of urgency, this understanding that this will not last is a great motivator. In my humble opinion that is how life should be lived, with the understanding that it is an ephemeral thing; that we will never be here again, we will never be in the same moment again. Our time here is limited and that is what makes our lives beautiful. When I was in Bangalore I always wanted to go to Bylakuppe, it is small Tibetan settlement around 80 kms from Mysore, I made the plan many time and then cancelled it by saying we can go any time, and of course I never did go there. That is because I always thought I had unlimited time. Don’t most of us do that? We think we can do this any time and we wait for some perfect time for it. When we will have the weekend totally free, when we’ll not be as tired, when we will have a little more money, when the weather is a little better, when all our friends would want to go etc. etc. You know the answer to all these whens is never. There is no better time than right now.

 

These however are not the only thing I realized. I also realized that I should respect us Indians a little more. I used to think we are exceptionally stingy, close-minded, conservative, littering, rapey, racist people. We are not. We Indians like to think we invented a lot of things like Nuclear weapons as Bhramaastra, Airplanes as Vimans, the number 0 and surgery. However racism, crime, poverty are certainly not our inventions. We are just poor, illiterate and a lot us cramped up in a comparatively little country. The Spanish from the 1970s tell stories of how they conserved plastic bags to carry stuff in them and had metal plates. South Koreans did not have any music that was not approved by conservatives until the 1990s. Women get catcalled on the streets even today in Morocco and the women in Brazil still feel unsafe going out in the night they have a female only taxi app called FemiTaxi. And yes, the Filipinos throw a lot of garbage on the streets and pee in the open. The cause of most of our problems boils down to poverty. Since we do not have money we do not have good public schools or dustbins on the street. People cannot afford to build toilets in the house and no restaurant or café will allow them to use the toilet while they are outside. The police is understaffed, underpaid and under equipped to handle the crime. Most people cannot afford to travel outside the country and have never seen how the world is. Vacations are scarce and most people are overworked. Women and men are kept segregated most of their lives because of the crime and our conservative values and this manifests in weird ways. I can go and on but the bottom-line is that we are not inferior in any way, we are just poor and a little behind in the development curve as a society. Once our living standard improves our country will become better.