Waking up, are we ?

I sometimes get the feeling that we in India are living in very important times. Not just because of our new found place as an emerging global power. More because of the way we are evolving as a society! As a society that can think, speak, discuss, debate and decide. Two major happenings of the recent past stand testimony.

• Article 377 - The fact that there was enough gut among us to discuss this on Live TV in a supposedly conservative society itself so amazes me. I would not vouch for the quality of the debate that often happens on TV but I though few NDTV debates were pretty fair and can form an important instrument in framing public opinion.
• Jaswant Singh's book on Jinnah and partition - I am particularly happy for the nation-wide debate the book will stir (or has already stirred, perhaps!). That someone, after Advani's Jinnah episode, will have the gumption to touch a soft subject like the partition and thereby kick-start a debate underscores the fact that our society is emerging into a truly pluralistic one. Not a pluralism that is defined by the multitudes of religions and cultures that exist here -facets that are more imposed on us than chosen, but a pluralism that is defined by our ideas and views that evolve with our experience and learning.

What say???

Sudha Murty's Discovery of the Indian Spirit

The current post is about a book that I am currently reading. Few books have excited me like this one, excitement enough for me to recommend the book to others - this post is an instrument to that end.

The Old Man & His God by Sudha Murthy is the book I am currently reading. The most striking thing of this book is its simplicity. Simplicity of language aside, I think it is the simplicity with which the free human spirit has been captured and presented that has caught my imagination.

Sudha Murthy is well known for the work of the Infosys Foundation that she runs. In the course of her work with the needy mostly in rural India, she encounters some really fascinating dimensions of the human spirit. The Old Man & His God is a collection of the author's encounters with the complexities of human nature - some rare virtues, some common misgivings and some strange anomalies. There are also accounts of her interaciton with her students, friends and associates - encompassing a complete spectrum of the Indian society.

Not that all the accounts described are truly astonishing. Some of them are pretty commonplace except that we normally don't tend to capture those defining insights from the happenings around us.

True to the caption Discovering the Spirit of India, this book does discover the spirit of the Indian society and takes the reader through an enriching journey - one that matures him to an elevated pedestal from where understanding human psyche becomes more easy and enjoyable.