Where It Starts

Where do I start? Well... the reason for me to start this blog actually is due to my pursuit of finding who am I? Or for that matter... who are we?

The answer to that, though looks simple at the first go, is not as simple as it looks on its face.

One simple answer is...

I am Sridhar, a typical Hyderabadi, born and brought up here. I share my birthday with events like the day when one of the cannibal dictators of Africa was deposed, the day when one old and weired haired guy proposed a theory called 'Relativity', the same day when a lanky president of America who's definition of democracy is widely quoted (though not followed to the 'T') gave his last speech before being shot dead and the day when Apollo 13 blasted off the earth. I lived all my life in this wonderful place Hyderabad that I rather call home. I was born to a Hindu couple who never went beyond their HSC exams, who went against their families and had an inter-cast marriage about 40 years back. I studied commerce and International Trade, bachelors from Nizam College (some of my friends say that this term 'Nizam' is so much into my nerves and blood that I keep boasting about it at the drop of a hat) and my MBA from Badruka, a place where I came across my most revered professor who taught so much of worldly wisdom. Then, I worked in varied fields from a bank to an online gaming company and now with a software company... worked as a banking executive to doing online marketing to training to being a business analyst.

But that is the simple answer for it. This thought actually made me sit back and try and find answers... guess by the time I find all the answers, I would not be here to read it completely... that is my strong belief about this! O.K. now coming to the deeper answer that I am looking at...

There was a mail that one of my ex-colleagues' forwarded me... don't remember the exact wordings, but the zest was something like.... 'isn't it too much of a coincidence that there ours is the only planet (as far as we know today) that was chosen, where, everything is in perfect symmetry and harmony? How come there is optimum temperature to allow life in the first place? The various life forms, climatic cycles, water, carbon in the right proportions... what not? Is it just a coincidence or is someone playing a game and might end the game the moment s/he thinks that the game is going out of control'... I mean we, humans are trying to take control of, trying to take charge of things and trying to play God. 'Trying to play God'... such a funny and absurd phrase! Can we ever... ever even come closer to that (most magical and beautiful creation)?? NO! But still... we are hell bent on proving our stupidity, of aiming to play God! And by using the term 'Trying to play God', I do not have any intention of talking about cloning or any such thing... not now... but much more basic things... who is a human to alter the environment and the face of this planet in so bad and selfish ways that so many of the species get wiped out of the face of our planet every year... extinct... forever! If not for us humans and our needs, there wasn't any need for coining the phrase 'global warming' (unless earth, due to the pull of the Sun gets closer and closer and eventually evaporate... which eventually is what earth's fate unless any meteor or an asteroid strikes us). But for human greed, the last major species extinction would have been the famous one... that of the dinosaurs, thanks to a meteor or something similar. Not the extinction of those every year in the Amazon or the forests of Indonesia or Africa thanks to deforestation. Yes, there are genetic reasons, agreed, but most of them are gone... forever... thanks to humans and their greed. And without this human greed taking the shape of global warming, we did not have a reason to rethink about the term 'perennial' as used in perennial rivers... be it the Brahmaputra, the Amazon, or for that matter the Holy Ganga! All the El-Nino's and unseasonal rains and a clear and present danger of cities like NY or Mumbai or even countries like the Maldives and most of what we know as Bangladesh resting under the sea/ocean bed. Imagine the most famous and biggest glaciers in Antarctica or the Arctic circle or for that matter our own Himalayan glaciers that mothered The Ganga, Brahmaputra, Sindhu, Yangtze, Huang He and so many other rivers, which until now were perennial might never flow and might face the fate of Saraswati, the 'mythical' third river in the Holy Trio... Triveni (collective name for the 3 rivers Ganga, Jamuna and Saraswati according to the Hindu mythology which converge to form the holy Sangam).

Think for a moment... do we... humans have any greater right on this planet and its resources than any ant or a fish? If the answer is 'Yes... we do... we are the chosen ones... the most intelligent species on this earth' then how is it that we ignore the responsibilities that generally come as a bundled deal along with any right? Is this a mark of supreme intelligence or a mark of stupidity? Isn't it unfair? Not just to our future generations, but, to the other species on this earth who have the same right on this earth like we do!

I have recently come across this conversation in one of my favorite comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes:

Calvin: Where are all the animals supposed to live now that they cut down these woods to put in houses?

By Golly, how would people like it if animals bulldozed a suburb and put in new trees?!?

It took hundreds of years for these woods to grow, and they leveled it in a week... its gone!

After they build new houses here, they'll have to widen the roads and put up gas stations. And pretty soon this whole area will just be a big strip.

Eventually there won't be a nice spot left anywhere!!

I wonder if you can refuse to inherit the world.

Hobbes: I think if you are born, it's too late!!!

Is this what we are going to inherit? If this made you think even for a jiffy, it serves the purpose!

Another day, another thought in search of... myself!