To Each his own and other musings...!!!

 Role of government:   Should the government bail out the banks? So should we become a company too big to fail? While not bailing the banks out would have been catastrophic, what is the limit? Sometimes, it looks like a world described in Atlas Shrugged is good, but is it really true? Would you really ignore a dying friend who couldn't fend for himself? What about children etc ?  It looks like completely selfish pursuit as described in Atlas Shrugged cannot be possible. Somewhere government should enter? Where is it and what are its limits? There is no right answer to this. I think there is no stable defined role for the government. It just has to cater to the existing demands of the people in the best way it sees. Hence, by design, it cannot satisfy everyone. To each his own. One person may see it as right and one may see it as wrong and the result can only be seen a long time later and sometimes never. Seeing this, I am getting more and more confidence on the fact that there is no one truth. To each his own.

In the Dream World: I have had many many ideas but very very few have seen the light of the day. That is enough proof that I am living more in the brain and less in the real world. May be I am becoming a philosopher. i.e not only giving out unproven theories but trying to live them. Not that it is wrong but I feel that I should live more in this world. The ideas are not bad but my mistake lies in trying to do them all alone. Slowly but surely I am realizing that we need good company to live in this world to lift us when we are down and for being lifted when they are down, to support each other and to push each other when other slacks. I had such good company in India in Sandy, but in the US with work taking most of the time and remaining time being spent on cooking and cleaning, there is very little time. But I think that should not be an excuse to not do anything.I have always kept to myself and lived an introvert. I have to connect more and live more in this world if I wish to realize most of my dreams.

No single madness aka passion: I am not sure if this is a problem. I have lot of interests good governance, education with values, good web sites, blogs, green energy, music and movies. Any thing in these fields I devour it. While reading each of it, I learn something new, I get new actionable ideas and feel inspired but with reading so much in so little time, at the end of the day I am not able to remember anything and it looks as if I haven't read anything at all. And it looks as if I am wasting the time. Though in reality, I am enjoying the time, I am feeling guilty of not utilizing the time well. Why this paradox? Though I am hopeful that my knowledge will one day come helpful, I am afraid of the fact that I might keep feeling guilty till that day comes.. !!! Sometimes, I feel if only I had only one madness or passion, I might have excelled in it and would have spared you of this long broody posts :)

Is Honesty The Best Policy Always ???

I read this post in Sandy's blog and it being very close to one of my thoughts, I decided to reblog it. Read this original post here.

So what are my thoughts on this ?
From our childhood we are taught that people in the world are either black or white. But as we grow up we understand that there are really very very few people in the world who are entirely black or white. For every dishonest thing any one does, those people have justifications of why it is right. And if you see from their side, it is not entirely trash too. I think there are ethical dilemnas and questions like till when will you be honest.

Consider this situation: Suppose you are going to a marriage and you have promised that you will bring one important thing to the marriage and the marriage might stop if you don't go. Suddenly you realize that you lost your purse. Suppose it is a remote place and the last bus for that place is leaving soon. You have no time to get more money. Let us make it more complex. Suppose nobody is giving you the money for ticket. And you find that one gentleman's purse falls down and you find sufficient money for the ticket. What  would you do? Would you steal the money ? If the option of borrowing doesn't exist , will you steal the money? Let is make it more complex. Suppose you need some money for operation of a loved one and you are not able to get money ethically. And you have some ways of getting money unethically for the operation - Will you do it?

What I am trying to do is making the decision sufficiently white so that you take it. In the real world we are faced with these and many more situations where you will have to take such decisions. Sometimes, these are personal like the questions above or sometimes they may be systemic.
Take the passport question for example - How many of you have got the passport without paying a bribe ? Anyone. That was my first brush with bribery - The officer who asked me just casually asked me - pay 300 rs. I was shocked. How can he claim the money so easily. I dared to ask him - Why is it for?  He said it is for something and took it. Will you risk not paying the bribe and getting your passport delayed ? How many pay claim the HRA allowance and medical allowance with fake bills ?

Generally, I try to avoid all such things. Once when my bike was towed for parking in a no parking zone (which I knew only after they towed - There was no notice there ), the police asked me to pay 100 bribe and take it or pay 200 rs fine and take it. I chose the latter route as I was very much against paying bribes. But the more I have seen life, the more I understood that it would take a lot to be honest always.

Now ignoring the money aspect of it, again, with the experiences I have, I am not sure if honesty is the best policy always. When there are dark secret about you and you have question, for which you have to let the truth in the open. Then you will be in the situation of damned if you tell and damned if you don't. While it was easy to hide the truth, telling the truth has had a very bad impact. Sometimes it seems as if not telling would have been better. But hiding the truth means  being dishonest with them and with yourself. So I told but paid dearly. I would accept that we shouldn't do something which would hate to accept before 10 people, but what if you were foolish enough to do such things ?

I would say everything is relative. There are no absolute truths. Every rule can be broken if situations permit.But as much as possible we should strive to be honest as we all know that is the right thing to do. It is better to design systems which will make it easy to be honest than having systems which will make it easy to be dishonest.

Kung Fu Panda - An absolute treat..!

Today I saw the movie Kung Fu Panda on the big IMAX screen and let me tell you the feeling is awesome... This was my first experience of watching a movie on IMAX and with the mesmerizing visuals of hills, lakes, sky and valleys thrilled me very much and I thought the 200 bucks for the movie were well spent. Not only that the movie is a delight to watch. It has an inspiring story, memorable dialogues and breathtaking animation. An absolutely must watch film.

Story: Po is a big fat panda who is the son of noodle making duck famous in the Peace City (where the story takes place) for his noodles. Po's father publicizes that he has a secret ingredient which he puts in the soups which make them so tasty. He expects Po to become a even better noodle maker after him but Po is interested only in Kung Fu. 

The Peace city is guarded by five great Kung Fu warriors who are trained by master shifu who is a student of Master Oogway (the great warrior who invented kung fu as shown in the movie). Master Oogway has a dream where in he sees that the evil Tai Lung  escapes from the prison.

Some background here -  Tai Lung was adopted and trained in Kung fu by master shifu. Shifu expects that Tai Lung will be made the dragon warrior and will be given the dragon scroll which has the secret to unlimited powers. But Master oogway sees evil in Tai Lung and refuses to give it to Tai Lung. Angered by this, Tai Lung tries to take it by force and is neutralized by Oogway and placed in a high security prison. 

Oogway tells that Tai Lung will escapte to Shifu and asks him to arrange a competition to choose the dragon warrior who will  defeat Tai Lung. Po who is interested in Kung Fu wants to see the competion but his father makes him to go and sell noodles there. But by the time po arrives the door of the Jade Palace, the door closes and in a desperate attempt to watch the selection of the dragon warrior, Po straps himself to  a chair of crackers and lights it and he suddenly falls in front of Master oogway who selects him as the Dragon Warrior. Unable to think of the big fat panda who doesnt even know the basics of Kung Fu as the dragon warrior, Shifu tries to scare him and discourage him into leaving the place. Even the other five warriors try to do the same but after meeting with master oogway, Po decides that he shouldnt quit and makes friends with five warriors with his humour and cooking. But Shifu is not at all convinced and cant even think of him as the dragon warrior but master oogway before leaving extracts a promise from Shifu that he will have confidence on Po and train him. So Shifu comes to train Po but as Po feels that Shifu doesnt trust him and wants him to leave, he is not interested in getting trained and tries to escape. Shifu convinces him and tries to teach him. After observing that Po can do everything for food, Shifu successfully trains him in Kung Fu using food to entice him into doing everything he needs for the training.  Meanwhile, the five warriors try to fight off Tai Lung but return defeated. After the training Po is given the dragon scroll. Po opens it to find nothing except a golden screen reflecting the face of the viewer, even Shifu doesnt find anything in it. Disappointed at the apparent lack of power in the scroll, Shifu asks the five warriors and Po to evacuate the Peace city while he will tries to stop Tai Lung as long as he can. Po returns to his father feeling rather down. While trying to console his son, Po's father says that the secret ingredient in the sauce is nothing, Po understands that the message of the dragon scroll was also nothing but to have confidence in himself. So he goes back to the palace where Tai Lung is fighting shifu. Tai Lung sees that Po has the dragon scroll and tries to get it from him but Po tries to tell him that there is no secret in the dragon scroll. After some time Tai Lung himself sees that there is nothing in the scroll, but by that time as po realizes that it is only his confidence plays the 'Wuxi finger hold' trick. Tai Lung asks Shifu would not have taught him that trick but Po says that he has 'figured it out'. Wuxi finger hold is a trick familiar to every warrior in kung fu and it is said that 'cleaning the mess after the shot is messy' meaning that the body will be blown to many pieces. Tai Lung belives this and is blown off by Po who understands that this is just a mind trick. Thus Po becomes the dragon warrior and all the five other warriors accept him as their master. Thus po realises his dream of becoming Kung fu warrior. 

There are many memorable dialogues in the movie used in various occasions which really touch us. 

1. Sorry doesn't make noodles: This is said by Po's father to his son when he doesnt make noodles. It tells us not to be too apologetic but get on with our work to get it done. 

2. One often meets with his destiny on the way to escape it. : This is said by Master Oogway to Master shifu, who tries to avert the escaping of Tai Lung by increasing the prison security. This means that we cannot escape our destiny so we should rather try to live it rather than escaping it. 

3. There is no accident: This is also said by Master Oogway to master shifu on more than one occasion, once when Shifu says that Po was selected as the dragon warrior by accident. It means that whatever happens, happens according to a plan and we should be at peace rather than trying to think of it just as an accident and trying to ignore it. 

4. You concentrate too much on what was and what will be : This is said by master Oogway to Po when Po is disheartened by the treatment meted out by the five warriors and Master Shifu during the first day of training: It means that we are thinking too much of either the past or the future wasting the current time. Oogway also remembers 'Yesterday is history, Tomorrow is a mystery but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present.' 

5. A real warrior never quits: This is said by Po to master Shifu when he tries to discourage him and make him quit. Even after bearing lot of embarassments meted out by Shifu, Po stubbornly refuses to go away. It tries to tell that once you have decided what you want to do, we should never ever quit. Rest if we need to but never quit. 

6. There is no secret sauce: This is said by Po's father to him when he is disillusioned by  seeing nothing in the dragons scroll. Po's father trying to console him says that there is no secret sauce in his famous noodle reciple. It means that there is nothing out there. We have to have confidence in ourself. It is inside us.. True isn't it? Just trust ourselves and the universe.. Everything happens for a reason ... There is no accident.. :) 

On the whole a great movie on the giant screen. The scenes of Tai Lung's escape from the prison, Tai Lung's fight with the five warriors and the going away of Master Oogway as petals in the stars are visual treats on IMAX. Must watch on giant screen...