Digging Happiness : Kamaleshwari Singh You Should Be The Winner Of LEAD INDIA Contest

It took seven years and back-breaking work for Kamaleshwari Singh to dig a pond that would supply water to his village

When water bodies in most villages in southern Bihar are shrinking and drying and villagers have to increasingly seek help from the state government, the story of a frail 63-year-old man has attracted attention from far and wide — mostly, however, from the people and nearly none so far from the Nitish Kumar government.

Kamaleshwari Singh, a semi-literate farmer of Manikpur village in Barh block of Patna district, surprised everyone who came to know of his feat. Over seven years, this man has dug a 60-ft-by-60-ft pond that is 25 ft deep, all by himself, using only a trowel and a bucket. He had to use a trowel, he says, because he could not manage to lift a spade.

Manikpur village, some 100km from the Bihar capital, is a back-of-the-beyond village that, like most villages in the state, has seen no development over the past two decades. Even bicycle tracks are non-existent here, let alone electricity and irrigation facilities in this village that has a population of 2,000 people. But Kamaleshwari’s achievement suddenly pitchforked Manikpur into the list of famous villages in Bihar. The pond he dug out of his farmland has been compared with the achievement of the late Dashrath Manjhi of Gaya district’s Gahlaur village, who carved a wide road from a hill. Manikpur village had no pond before Kamaleshwari decided to get one dug, thereby making a permanent source of water available to the residents of Manikpur.What makes Kamaleshwari’s achievement more significant is that his initial inspiration for the job and his continued determination to keep digging for seven years came from his frustration with what he calls “nasty village politics”. He was not a participant in village politics. A simple farmer who owned 12 bighas of land 15 years ago and now has only five bighas, he got entangled in the regular tide of crime in his village and surrounding villages. His elder son, who kept fighting pitched battles for supremacy with gangsters in the nearby villages, was killed. Kamaleshwari had to sell seven bighas of his land to fight court cases. Thoroughly disgusted, he once decided not to fight any court cases and to rather concentrate on “something constructive”.

“I always wanted my village Manikpur to have a pond of its own. For years, when I was young, I tried to persuade villagers and even local politicians to help set up a pond in the village. But nobody paid attention to what I said. As I kept witnessing the people of my village finding it difficult to take proper baths and irrigate their farms close to their homes, something kept burning inside me as I was unable to do anything myself. I found myself getting falsely implicated in cases like violent crimes and even a murder in all those years. After losing my 26-year-old elder son, Siyaram, to gang war, I decided to forget all bitterness and start doing something constructive,” Kamaleshwari told TEHELKA. As he started digging for the pond on a field close to his house in the summer of 1996, the sun scorching his bare back and sweat lining his body, the entire village started laughing at him. “Children and elders alike kept looking at me and laughing. They even ridiculed me by calling me ‘Talabi Baba’. My own family tried to restrain me from this work, but I kept ignoring everything and got the pond ready in seven years,” said Kamaleshwari, who studied only up to Class VIII.

The 60-ft-by-60-ft pond has enough water even in summer for the villagers to bathe, wash clothes and feed their cattle. At the height of summer, the water level in the pond remains at over 10 ft, say villagers. “It is a boon that our village has now got a pond. We have only about five hand pumps in the village, so most villagers face difficulty in bathing, washing clothes and preparing cattle-feed. Kamaleshwaribaba’s work has made a big difference to our lives,” said Dinesh Singh, a farmer. In fact, the village, inhabited by people from various upper and lower castes like Rajputs and the Yadavs, has deep and complex caste divisions that disallow people from using one another’s resources. “But there is no caste division in the use of this pond,” says Rakesh Kumar Gupta, a villager. Although a river, the Dagrain, flows just 4km from Manikpur village, its water fails to reach the fields due to the absence of irrigation facilities. So several villagers find this pond a dependable source of water for irrigating their farmland close to it.
Kamaleshwari would start digging from 6 in the morning till about 7 in the evening everyday. “It was never easy to dig a pond with a trowel. I would dig some earth, fill it in the bucket and throw it away. I wanted to dig in the evening, but there was no electricity. There is still no electricity,” laughed Kamaleshwari. His wife, Draupadi Devi, said Kamaleshwari kept toiling at the field even when his family had to face grave financial constraints. “We had run out of nearly all our wealth after getting our three daughters married off. Then the murder of Siyaram and the false cases against my husband made us poorer. Jairam, the younger son, had got no work. But my husband ignored everything,” she said.

Kamaleshwari now lives with his wife, his murdered son’s two widows and three grandchildren. His scarce resources make it difficult for him to make both ends meet. “I want to do fish farming in this pond with the help of villagers so that we get fish to eat and make some money, too. But there has been no offer of help from the government so far despite our requests,” he said. With his love for gardening, he has planted fruit trees around the pond and there are now nearly 40 trees of mangoes, jackfruit and blackberries and some teak trees. The pond site often gets visitors from far and near. Kamaleshwari still works at the pond, trying to prevent it from silting. He still uses his worn-out trowel and bucket to dig earth and deepen the pond.Even as stories about the pond and the old man’s feat keep being proudly narrated in various meetings of politicians and officials in Patna, local officials and elected leaders have hardly visited the pond. Neither the sarpanch nor the mukhiya have come calling, let alone the MLAs and ministers. There was some talk about recommending his name for felicitation by the government, but nothing has happened so far. “I want some development in this village. We need wires on the electricity poles, good roads and fish in this pond. I want to meet the chief minister at his Janata Ka Durbar in Patna soon,” said Kamaleshwari

( The above story is from Tehlka Weekly it is worth publishing again and agian.......)

Day begins with obituary ad


If you asked rural readers, many would confess that they started reading the morning’s newspaper with the obituary column. In a place like Galgali ( My moms village ) this has a simple reason. You could attend the funeral or pay condolences and then have your bath, as my aunt used to claim, thus saving time, effort and water at one shot.

The obituary also makes interesting reading. You can keep track of families, people and where they have settled through these columns. My uncle has Bangalore connections from childhood and he has been able to track many classmates, teachers, his father’s colleagues, and other acquaintances through these columns.

The practice of placing obituaries in the newspaper is a very British custom. The ruling monarch’s appointments, announcements and honours bestowed—including appointments of merchants as suppliers—were printed in the national nespaers. Then came the engagements, marriages, births and finally the death announcements of the crème de la crème. This custom was adopted in India along with colonisation. Strangely, it is only the Times of India Mumbai that still publishes announcements of birth, engagements and weddings along with obituaries. All other publications in the country only prefer deaths.

The announcement of death and funerals that are current is understandable. However years after somebody’s death—anniversaries, birth, death etc.—are published with huge photos. Does it have any relevance I ask myself. However, the custom of announcing eye donors after death is indeed a laudable one as it can be a motivation for others to do so.

Sometimes a cheerful photo is published leading one to exclaim, “Achacho! Young fellow to have passed away!” Then one is rudely awakened to the small script underneath that the person is being welcomed, congratulated, whatever from abroad or for having received a degree or taken part in a conference.

In Mumbai again there are reams and reams of newspaper space devoted to Thanksgiving to a favourite deity. That too makes one wonder whether the all-powerful media delivers newspapers first thing in the morning to the Gods too! Messages to the departed from loving offspring, friends and others are also part of obituaries and maybe the departed are reading their obituaries somewhere, sometime.

I know some people who have prepared their obituaries when they are alive as they do not trust their families to do it right. Family feuds too are aired in public with separate announcements for one parent from different factions. Likewise photos of the departed are sometimes unrecognizable that makes you ask the main mourner, “The person who died, is it you are your brother?”

There is a separate class of people who mourn the death of their pets (and anniversaries) and announcements are put in with suitable photos. Newspapers wait with obituaries for slipping into the day’s current news when a famous personality is ill or dying. They also have to keep fillers for that space in case the event is postponed.

Finally, if you are keeping track of the death announcements, often you can find errata—date, time, place and even the name being published. Recently the death of a member of a famous old age home was published giving the departed person the name of the Home! It necessitated another ad published with apologies and the real name of the inmate a few days later.

Like picking an auspicious time to deliver a child through C section, soon there may be people who want to meet their maker according to newspaper deadlines. So next time you read an obituary remember that it has a story behind it!

Mujhe Chutti Chahiye, Mujhe Mera Gaon Jaana Hain.

When I was around 3 or so, I remember distinctly, even after 26 years, we were in Bijapur. We had a small house on rent, and empty field’s around. There used to be a lot of butterflies around. I used to move around on a small tricycle, and would slowly go near it, and catch the butterfly and keep it in my upper pocket. I would cycle home fast, to show my mom and sister, and when I open my pocket, the butterfly is gone. I used to cry, and go and again catch another one, with the same result. It never crossed my mind to kill it and then show. I never saw two butterflies of the same colour.God only knows how he made them.
We used to catch Borangi ( multi coloured insect ),and put it in a match box, and either it used to die, or run away. And there was this tree near the bus stop. It used to have Khujli wali Imlis (some fruits which cause itching).We used to carefully pluck it with a handkerchief,and put it in our school bag,and given a chance put it in the back of the pants of a friend.You should have seen they guy itching his backside in the bus,as though doing a dance,and we would be laughing away. His mom would yell at us, and at the same time giving us Sherbat, requesting us to please spare her son. Once she showed us his red bums, and we were laughing uncontrollably in her house. Bad of us, but well we were kids, and kids dont do any wrong, do they? Luckily for the guy, we didn’t put it in the front of his pants

We friends used to love plucking mangoes from the trees of the Girls School next door, for that we had to jump the wall. I was caught many a times, and the principal used to think, I had come to fool around with the girls .

Girls used to play Langdi,and those squares game on the floor,i don’t know the name.We guys used to play marbles.Make a Triangle,put 5 marbles each in it, and with a big marble from far, try to hit them. One of my gujrati friends used to be very good and used to win away all my marbles.

I had a girl cousin from Belgaum , who came down for a few days to visit us.She came and said i want to play marbles with u guys. I was so ashamed,i shooed her off,but mom said let her play,shes come for a few days only.My friends objected,but gave in.Boy she was a champ,this female,and won me all the marbles that i had lost in the last few month. My gujrati friend cried foul, but i threatened to tell my other school friends that he had lost to a girl,and that kept him quiet.Whenever he used to bully me, I used to just tell him " She is Coming in a few days " and that would bring him to his senses.Who wants to lose to a female ?Remember the movie " Kuch Kuch Hota Hai ".SKR did not want to admit he used to lose to Kajol.

Outdoor games for us used to be football,the old fashioned one,with the rubber bladder.Come rains,and it was fun playing in the slushy grounds of Government High School Cricket we played with the tennis balls in the compound, and broke many a windows. Good there were not many cars those days.

Kite flying was great fun. My cousin used to love fly kites, and I would hold the Charkhi,while he flew them high.He and me used to make Manja.We used to buy the colour,broken fine glass,and I don’t know what else.We used to tie the thread on the terrace,and cousin with Socks as gloves,used to put the paste of manja on the thread.

When he used to fly the kites,he used to have the socks on,and by evening his fingers used to bleed,as the glass of the manja used to tear in his fingers thru the socks.And when we had a Pech, he used to give Dheel, while we used to tell him to Khech instead.and the boys down used to steal our Manja when our kites got cut,and I used to curse them. My cousin had a hard time trying to keep me quiet.

Indoor Games were fun too,like Carrom,ludo,Chinese Checkers and Monopoly.For Carrom,after the boric powder finished, we used to flick Moms Expensive talc power quietly,and get whacked for the same.In the rainy season,we had a hard time playing on the damp carrom,and used to take the carrom near the stove to get it warm and heated.Everybody used to be after the queen,just as teenagers we used to be after the pretty females.

We used to go to Raymond and Gemini Circus it was like a treat, with the animals, and the dwarfs.We were too young to notice the pretty trapeze females,though " Kuch Kuch Hota Tha ",but could not understand at that age ki kya ho raha hai.

Hope I get chutti soon and do few things which I haven’t since past few years.

ThinkSimplicity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aOCDChkXYY

A SENSE OF VALUES

Values are core beliefs which guide and motivate attitudes and behavior. When you value something you want it (or want it to happen). Values are relatively permanent desires. Values are answers to the “why” question. You keep on asking “why” questions until you reach a point where you no longer want something for the sake of something else. At this point you have arrived at a value.

Let’s take an example – I was once talking to Post Graduate student I asked him, “Why are you doing this course?”

“To gain qualifications,” he answered.

“Why do you want to gain qualifications?”

“To succeed in my career.”

“Why do you want to succeed in your career?”

“To reach the top.”

“Why do you want to reach the top?”

“To get power.”

“Why do want do you want power?”

“To control people,” he answered.

“Why do you want to control people?”

“I want to control people.”

“Why?”

“I like to control people.”

“Why?”

“Just for the sake of it – I like controlling people,” he said and further why’s elicited similar responses related to control. [Control for the sake of control!]

I realized that control was one of his values and maybe he was a future megalomaniac in the making!

The same line of questioning of persons undergoing higher education may reveal values like knowledge, money, status, standard of living, ambition, achievement, growth, reputation, excellence, fame.

Values are our subjective reactions to the world around us. They guide and mold our options and behavior. Values are developed early in life and are very resistant to change. Values develop out of our direct experiences with people who are important to us, particularly our parents. Values rise not out of what people tell us, but as a result how they behave toward us and others. Remember, there can’t be any “partial” values; for example: you cannot be 50% honest (half-honest) – either you are honest or you are not.

Are you doing you MBA? Keep asking yourself why you are doing it, and you will ultimately arrive at your value.

“Why are you doing your MBA?”

“To learn management.”

“Why do you want to learn management?”

“To get a good job in a top firm as a manager.”

“Why?”

“To make more money.”

“Why?”

“To have a high standard of living.”

The guy I was talking to re-iterated here since standard of living was his value but you can go on and on till you find your value. In one case I was surprised to find conformance as a prime value in a student of MBA – she was doing MBA because everyone else was doing it!

With the rise and predominance of the utility value of education, the most important criterion for ranking B-Schools is the pay-packet their students get and not other factors like the quality of faculty and infrastructure, academic achievements and ambience etc. That’s why there is a rush towards IT and Computer Science as compared to other more interesting and challenging branches of Engineering and Technology – money seems to be the cardinal value amongst students these days! Some do prefer the civil services even after completing their Engineering from premier institutions as, for them, things like status, service, power may be important values.

Is a high salary important to you?
Is it important for your work to involve interacting with people?
Is it important for your work to make a contribution to society?
Is having a prestigious job important for you?

It is most important for you to find out your own values (by the “why” method) to avoid value mismatch. Value mismatch is at the root cause of dilemmas in your life. A conflict between your personal and organizational values may result in ethical dilemmas, while value mismatch between two persons may sow discord and cause stress and turbulence in a relationship.

Your values are possibly the most important thing to consider when you're choosing an occupation. If you don't take your values into account when planning your career, there's a good chance you'll dislike your work and therefore not succeed in it. For example, someone who needs to have autonomy in his work would not be happy in a job where every action is decided by someone else.

It is important to distinguish between values, interests, personality, and skills:
Values: the things that are important to you, like achievement, status, and autonomy
Interests: what you enjoy doing, like reading, taking long walks, eating good food, hanging out with friends
Personality: a person's individual traits, motivational drives, needs, and attitudes
Skills: the activities you are good at, such as writing, computer programming, teaching
Of these, interests, skills and personality can be developed, but values are intrinsic core beliefs inherent within you which you must endeavor to discover by yourself.

Whether it is your work or relationships, value congruence is of paramount importance – your values must be in harmony for the relationship to tick. Value Dissonance due to mismatch between individual values and organizational values can cause great strain and trauma at the workplace.

Even within yourself, in order to avoid inner conflict there must be no confusion about your true values. Remember the saying of Mahatma Gandhi: Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

Dear Reader, sit down in a quiet place all by yourself, introspect, ask yourself the “why” question and find out your own values. First know yourself. Then know others – try to ascertain their values (personal values and organizational values too!). Avoid value-mismatch and value-dissonance to the extent feasible. The mutual harmony in your values should determine your choice of work, activities, relationships, friends and partner.

Is freedom an important value for you? Will the job you are considering (or the person you want to marry) give you enough freedom?

Do you value leisure? Oh, yes! Leisure is not only an important value but also a determinant of character – If you want to know about a man find out how he spends his leisure! It’s true in your case too – If you had a day off what will you do? Read a book, write a story, go hiking outdoors, play your favorite sport, adventure sports, chat with friends, picnic, see a movie, eat your favorite cuisine in a restaurant, or cook it yourself, socialize in your club, spend the day at home with your family, or see TV at home, or just spend the day in glorious solitude enjoying quality time with yourself? Or would you rather not “waste” your leisure time and spend the day doing something “useful” connected with your work, career or advancement towards “achieving” your “goals”? How you spend your leisure reveals your values too!

Do you value humor, fun, pleasure, food, enjoyment, sex, family life, quality of life, status, money, success, fame, power, prestige, security, nature, loyalty, love, affection, independence, privacy, togetherness, tranquility, adventure, leadership, followership, competition, contentment, creativity – find out for yourself, and in others who you want to relate with – match and harmonize your values, and be happy and fulfilled in your work and your relationships.

Remember, at any important milestone in your life, when you have to make a vital decision, whether you are on the verge of selecting a job or a marriage partner – trust your sense of values!

In conclusion here is a quote from the German Philosopher Friedrich Hegel:

“A man who has work that suits him and a wife, whom he loves, has squared his accounts with life”

When did you become an American

When did you become an American?
Buddy, Dude, Chill, Cool, Wazzup, No Kidding.Words we hear around us resound with Americanisms. The Queen’s English has become the Dude’s. As if, following world politics, English too is becoming unipolar.

Like all things, what was originally discovered by someone else has been appropriated by the Yanks. Earlier, the slogan was ‘Be English, speak English’; now it reads ‘Be a Yankee, speak like one’. Looking through history’s glasses: the redcoats have finally been turned back, from India.

Ever since the flower power generation landed on our shores, the evolution of English in India has been like deferred transmission from the US of A. What started as ghetto-talk in American towns in the ’70s became entries in dictionaries by the ’80s; and was eventually picked up by all Indians by the ’90s.

Reading Wodehouse, the last generation grew up calling each other bloke or chappie. Now, it is: “Hi dude” or “That guy”. ‘Rubbish’ was long thrown into the garbage can, and replaced with ‘crap’ or ‘trash’. Even phrases and quotations are seeing gross seismic changes. People prefer Bogart’s “Play it again, Sam” to Churchill’s quotations on history.

The structure, too, has become a victim of the lingua disease. Sentences like “You don’t know nothing” is commonly used on all television networks. The popularity of English is nothing new. It was sought after even during the Raj. But now the urge to learn English is overwhelming even in small towns and villages. English-teaching colleges are mushrooming all over the country. All advertising Hemingway-like grasp over the lingua franca. And the shift is certainly towards American English.

Queerly, the reasoning for the evolution came from an Englishman way back in 1945. Prophetically, George Orwell stated in his essay Politics and the English Language: “It is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer.” Now, as then, it is true everywhere.

The number of call centres popping up in metros demand all employees have average Joe six-pack stage names. What’s more, workers are trained to give them an American twang. There are colleges that readily train aspiring call centre employees in American dialects. Even something as innocuous as Microsoft Word – on which this article was written – offers the user an American dictionary. Naturally, the language gets reflected in lives outside offices. ‘Don’t know’ becomes ‘dunno’; ‘going to’ becomes ‘gonna’; everyone is ‘chilling’. ‘Bucks’ (a word that initially connoted just dollars) now means rupees too.

Still, like chicken tikka pizzas and aloo tikki burgers, language too is experiencing cross-pollination. In the north, one often runs into English-Hindi alliteration. Everywhere, vernacular phrases are literally translated as English expressions. Language, too, is fitted to suit our comfort levels.

What will eventually come out can never be gauged. American English could become as omnipresent as Coca-Cola or Pepsi — quite different from what Oscar Wilde once commented of his country, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays except, of course, language.” But then, what did old pops know. Right, dude?

American Slang’s Everyone Uses

Booze: The ‘in’ word for the good ol’ hooch, tipple.

Dude: Borrowed from rappers’ dictionary, a sobriquet for the word ‘friend’.

Chill: The frozen (not formal) cousin of the word ‘relax’.

Cool: The sweeping, ubiquitous expression for all occasions just to say good or good idea.

Bucks: Originally meaning dollars, now suggests all kinds of greenbacks


(Source of information : Tehlka )

Script Writers Taking Tution

Imagine script writers taking tution classes WOW that sounds great.Here are few examples of how you can find a teacher like that....

MUMBAI: If a 35-year-old city-bred gentleman were to express surprise in Hindi, he would mostly come up with: "Mein surprised ho gaya ."

But, today, his seven-year-old son has somehow learnt to speak the language differently. He can confidently correct him with a grammar-perfect: " Mujhe ascharya hota hai , Daddy."

Anush Shah of Gujarati-Tamilian parentage is one such child who speaks in a Hindi normally heard in dubbed Hollywood movies. "It's perfect," says Anush's mother Tharini proudly. Strangely, Chembur's Tharini credits the hours Anush spends watching animation channels for his advanced Hindi-speaking skills. This would also explain the translated, textbookish feel to the language that young kids speak these days.

Even as most adults and even older kids like Jia Pandya (12) of Prabhadevi debate about the quality of spoken Hindi on kids channels, half the stuff is not really Hindi. It is tapori Hindi, many parents say it is cartoons that have introduced their toddlers to the language. As unlikely as it sounds, the national language has found a patron in children's television channels.

That's because, ever since animation channels went Hindi some years ago, children started picking up an easy-to-grasp Hindi spoken by lively animation characters such as Noddy, Oswald, Tweety, Bugs and Daffy. Nothing, however, comes without excess baggage. Cartoon characters are such a big influence on these kids that they ape not just their language, but their squeaky, high-pitched voice and mannerisms too. Anush shocked his mother recently by pirouetting and exclaiming, " Aapko mujhpe naaz hoga (You must be proud of me)", when she congratulated him about a school award. A five-year-old Kandivli resident, likewise, always exclaims using the common cartoon expression: " Baba re !" She also uses sentence connectors used by cartoons, like " tyaaki (because)", over the traditional " kyunki (also, because)".

Even schoolteachers agree, if partially, about the channels' prowess. Lakshmi Rao, head of the pre-primary section at Kandivli's Pancholia School, says it is a combination of peer interaction and animation that works for today's children. Her idea finds echo in speech therapist Shubhangi Auluck. "If a child sees a cartoon character knocking on a door and saying kholo , she understands kholo means open. This way she can develop other languages. For kids, cartoons are lively, attractive and even addictive. They help develop concepts." Auluck insists that cartoons definitely play a role in Hindi skills because kiddie channels use simple words and short sentences.

It is natural then that Santa Cruz's Aparajita Agnihotri has been hooked on to cartoons since the age of two, an age when languages start falling into place. Her mother, Tanaya, says it was cartoons that helped her speech become clearer. Aparjita, now four, giggles and says in chaste Hindi: " Mujhe sab cartoons achchhe lagte hain (I like all the cartoons)." But, as children grow, their cartoon quota drops. The space is quickly filled by Hindi news channels.

Hema Shah, mother of 14-year-old Chirag from Sion, says this is when both cartoon and news channels start helping simultaneously. "They learn to speak faster with cartoon characters. With news channels, they read the tickers at the bottom. And they learn to read faster."