EVERYTHING HAS A MEANING IN GOD’S DESIGN

Dr Rangnath smashed the coconut onto the foot steps of his newly constructed house,  marking a new beginning of his retired life. As a chief medical officer in kannur district of Kerala life was often bit more busy than required at that age. This new house of theirs was a dream house especially for his wife  Suman . All through her life she lived in the stingy government accommodations, and you know how they are ? The interiors and fitments are never to your taste, seepage with the first rains would forecast the onset of monsoons and the creaky sound from doors and cupboards would never go, no matter how hard you try to grease them. This house of theirs was built with the choicest interiors and all things perfectly matching in color and design. Suman’s kitchen was  state of the art modular and ergonomically designed. This was perfectly what she had longed all through her life in those government accommodations. Dr Rangnath was a surgeon of highest order with an eye and hand for perfection. In his  profession , he couldn’t afford a smallest incorrect incision or for that matter an extra small suture. As per him ,things could only  be  medically correct, if they were surgically perfect. His perfectionist attitude could well be seen in their house. Dr Rangnath was a placid personality in love with nature. It is this reason that albeit he remained away from village all though his life, he finally decided to settle down in his native town in a serene environment away from the hustle bustle of city life.  India's abysmally low doctor-patient ratio - one doctor for 2000 people, and medical emergencies kept him busy  all these years of his service. In this fuss, he could never realize when his children  grew up,  moved on to their professions and his service came to a terminal end. In his retired life keeping himself close to nature , he planted a coconut tree in the back yard of his house.  The daily morning  routine would begin with watering this tree and watching sprouting of leaves  gave an immense pleasure. Bringing up a coconut palm is like raising a child. Its germination takes six months and it almost takes 20 years for a palm to mature and  reach its full potential with an average life span of at least 80 years. With his care the palm was growing at a healthy pace and its husk would get thicker as days passed by. The noticeable growth of the palm would also  indicate that reasonable time has passed since their children visited last and their visit must be around the corner.  Time had flown and this young palm was now over fifteen feet in height, when it conceived its first fruit of it’s life span. Sipping their morning tea sitting under the sprawling leaves of the palm, Suman noticed that the young palm had  ripped coconuts this year. Dr Rangnath grinned and told Suman , “their two children she had raised , but this palm was his post retirement parenting , trying to recover the joy he had missed experiencing his own children growing”.

Consoling him Suman said “ no, you have been a perfect father as you have been a perfect surgeon, else our son wouldn’t have become an IAS and daughter wouldn’t have been a practicing doctor in London.”

Dr Rangnath said” you have always been modest in giving  all the credit to me and I am lucky to have you as my better half”

He thought of sharing the first fruit of his palm with his wife. He couldn’t control the feeling of his joy at a thought of sipping coco water together from same nut. This feel brought a brisk smile on to his face. Dr Rangnath climbed the stairs to reach the roof top to pluck the coconut. He went to the edge of the roof to reach for the fruit , his reach was just a couple of inches short, he leaned forward in  an extra effort and then he realized that he had leaned little more than he could balance and there was nothing on the roof to support him. Coming down with a force, his head  hit the white marbel floor of the backyard. It was a fatal head injury. Now, Dr Rangnath is no more there, but that palm still stands as a symbol of his love, affection and a reason for Dr Rangnath’s union with GOD the Almighty.

No one has ever been able to understand God’s design. In the panoramic view of life, more often than not, we would realize that everything has a purpose and we don’t understand it, until life unfolds it’s meaning to us. The coconut tree had a specific purpose of being the reason for Dr Rangnath's union with God,What may seem to us as an error, is actually a perfect part in God's  script. This story is inspired by a true incident.

Choices Decide Chances

Three pillar subjects during the first semester of the Engineering, EM( Engineering Mechanics) , ED (Engineering Drawing ) and ET( Electrical Technology) , one of which,  invariably for most of the engineering students would get stuck. And only about 30 percent would be lucky enough to escape the twinge of  these so called “Tridevs” .  A night prior to EM ( Engineering Mechanics) final exams , somber mood prevailed in the entire hostel . Two of the best friends , I and Mrinal sitting in our room mulled over our insufficient preparation and time wiled away in movies and outings during the inter exam breaks. Least realizing that the more we mulled over it, more time slipped out of our hands and a last few hours of make and break would also be gone. During the stressed situations the bladder pressure would reach its peak frequently and hence a compulsory off , what we used to call a SSB” Short Susoo break”. Heading for my destination as I walked through, I observed a distinct silence prevailed  in the entire corridor as oppose to cacophony in normal days.  I observed most of the talks coming from rooms were about force resolving, frictional force, pendulum and other typical mechanics jargon. The skin deep preparation of mine instilled the fear in me, and a sinking feel mixed with lots of guilt ran through my head. Sitting on the study table, me and Mrinal opened our books to finish at least the easiest chapter on "friction". I picked a question to solve, when a thought came into my mind” this one chapter wouldn’t make me pass, leave it, nothing can be done, it’s too late”. At that point I almost gave up my fight of EM and pronounced to call it a day ,retiring to bed. Mrinal gave me a butt, asking me to rejoin him in at least finishing the chapter we had started. I instead told him  “he too should wind up and push off to sleep, mountains can’t be dug overnight”. His all attempts to persuade me to study table were of no use and I didn’t pay  heed to any of  his calls.  Next day in the examination hall , nothing unexpected ,bizarre at the sight of question paper, it didn’t take me more than a  few minutes to realize that there was nothing much that I could actually figure out till the end. However there was a ray of hope , the question from friction’s chapter which I and Mrinal were solving a night prior ,when I had raised  the white flag and surrendered, it had actually appeared  verbatim in the exam .More than trying to solve it ,I was trying to recollect flash of my memory to figure out what I had seen in the solution, unable to recollect, I saw the last ray of hope diminishing with fading signs of memory.  A night prior God gave a chance, unable to read the cue, I decided my fate. I was thinking what must be Mrinal’s state of affairs , but I was sure it must be certainly better than mine. After the exam he told me, he too couldn’t complete the solution in the exam, but, since he had been over the question the previous night, he remembered the final answer, which he had written in bold and boxed it around, rest depends on fate. The results were as expected I flunked by 2 marks at 38  and he just managed over the other side of boundary by over 2 marks at 42. I was bound to meet this fate as a night prior only I had made my choice “nothing can be done” .And Mrinal’s will to fight it out, though at last moment, made the difference. I was happy for him as he needed more than me to be all clear in exams , in order to change his department stream from Electrical to Computers Technology. And stragglers were not considered for this option.

Two years later, in the  exam hall of  Electronic devices and circuits  (EDC), once again a heavy weight among  third year of degree subjects. It was a grody  question paper and perplexed most of the students in hall. Making an eye contact with contemporaries in the hall clearly revealed the situation of the others wasn’t good either.  The hallucinations from my EM experience in first years haunted me and fear of failing in  exam rattled my spine. Next fifteen minutes I was contemplating and collecting reserves of my mental energy, reassuring my self of my resolve of not giving it up. I knew, I had fared well in the internal exams. And my internal assessment score would be nothing less than 19 out of 20. So making my calculations right, I just needed 20 in externals out of 80 , to take my total(internal plus external) to 40 crossing over to the other side of fence. By now I knew, how much humiliation it meant being on flip side of the results. But since my preparation was adequate this time unlike the previous, my resolve was firm. Careful scrutiny of this numerical oriented paper revealed that I still could score about 10 odd marks from theory section . So now the fight was only for balance of 10 marks to reach up to 20. The stress levels were so high that even the simple appearing problems were getting stuck midway. Then appeared a streaks of silver lining in the darkness, as I got to eavesdrop on the numerical value of the answer to one of the questions. And the real engineer in me came to work. Doing a backward calculation from the known answer and given values in question, I figured out the formula  to be used . And then putting things straight, I solved the question in the answer sheet. For me, I was putting  my entire analytical skills to work to produce something in an unconventional manner. 

Two months later, when the results were out, my eyes were only looking for one subject marks. And I had swayed the baton on to the other side of the finishing line by a margin of 2 making a total of 42 and learning an important lesson in life. It’s the choice that makes the difference.  Had I not chosen ,  to give  up on EM night , I would not have had that taint of clearing in supplementary on my first year’s mark sheet . Because The unseen supreme power also help those who decide to help themselves. . In life, when ever we are pushed against all odds to the  brink of  frustration and quitting, then only those of us, who at  that  time decided to chose a forward path, make their leading journey . Moreover it’s only in the dictionary that “chance” comes before “choice”, in life, choices we make, decide chances we have.

VOTE FOR BETTER FUTURE

Like each drop fills the ocean, similarly every vote counts towards building the nation. First, we have to believe ”my vote makes a difference” before we  see the difference it makes. To be able to see the change, we ought to take as much a pain as we take in choosing our TV, Laptop, Car, School for our children, our job, bridegroom for our daughter and the list is endless. Then why this callous attitude, when it comes to selecting our parliamentarians. The statistics show one fourth of members of parliament are tainted i.e. 162 of Lok sabha MPs face criminal charges, isn’t it alarming ? But then who is to be blamed. Let us look in to  ourselves , when it was time to make a choice, we didn’t register ours. We were either too busy in petty mundane issues or were lazy enough not to rise to the occasion.  Hence those of the countrymen, who felt their brethren should be up there in the House of parliament chose them.

Recent polls of Punjab, Uttarakhand and Uttar paradesh  showed only 60 percent of population turning up to the polling booths. Now these 40 percent uncast  votes can actually change the fate of governance. If my vote is my right , then in the interest of  country it should be made mandatory to exercise this right of voting. After all every citizen should contribute in the mandate  deciding our policy makers.  If  the nations like Israel, Austria can have compulsory military tenure of every citizen as “National service” to nation, then in India at least voting can be made compulsory. One of the step towards this can be a immediate law to this effect enforced in letter and spirit. Also Election Commission of India should explore possibilities of  e-voting in addition to existing procedure. The entire process can be made hacker proof ,invoking multilayer secured protocols just akin to banking sector portals which have secured transactions. Given the opportunity to vote online, we would see a drastic up surge in the voting percentage and max number of people would then participate in it’s true  sense in electing the worlds largest democracy. Indian polity would then see a paradigm shift. In today’s arena e-voting is not asking  for moons and stars. It’s hard to believe that in this internet world where every activity can be done online except voting. Somewhere down the line there appears a lack of will or vision, which is best known to the Election Commission or political class directing it. The facet of Indian polity depends on our attitude towards “the power in  voting”. Do we really want to see a change ? or continue under the same umbrella ,it’s up to us to decide. Let’s cast our votes with sense of pride and mark a difference. And remember you don’t vote , you don’t matter..

"Pollution Under Control Certificate" An Environmental Concern

It  is not how stringent  rules are, it’s how stringently they are executed at grass root level makes them effective in it’s  true sense. Keeping pollution under check is a growing global concern and so is New Delhi’s concern too. As a mature and responsible government the steps have been initiated and necessary  laws have been enforced in this field . One such rule is to obtain PUC “Pollution Under Control” certificate by the owner for the vehicle on road. The authority to issue PUC certificate is being out sourced to various private agencies.  Which set up a multi point contact system of mobile vans  issuing  PUC certificates. These agencies instead of taking it as sense of responsibility  in the global cause , take it as an opportunity to make money at the cost of our future generations. Most of the PUC vans do not have serviceable pollution checking equipment, the equipment on board the vehicle is just the name sake and by any means does not match the standards for such a task. If at all a few vehicles have equipment in order , but then the routine practice is to fill in the details and handover the certificate at slight extra cost called “suvidha shulk”. Such fake PUC certificates are like legal permit to drive polluting vehicles with out the fear of authorities in effect compounding the pollution levels. The law enforcing agencies must ensure   not only the PUC is mandatory, but also the way it is being made available to the public requires a strict watch else the very basic aim is defeated. The callous approach of agencies flouting  law must attract deter able punishments  in terms of canceling of license, penal deductions and imprisonment if required..

No law is effective unless the very basic fiber to enforce it is effective. In the present case, it is the issuing of genuine PUC certificates that dictates the success of this law or it would be just another rule in the book , which holds no meaning in its true sense. It’s better to have  no law than to have an absolute ineffective one. It is high time that concern authorities must give it a serious thought to tame this menace.