advise to guys going into arranged marriages in India

ADVISE TO GUYS GOING INTO ARRANGED MARRIAGES(in India)

My number one advise is that you do not say this to the girl after you marry her:

“I was not interested in marrying you. I was forced to by my parents”.

This is one disgusting sentence, many a bride has to hear, the moment, a minor tiff occurs between the newly weds.

·         Please develop a spine/ develop some courage to say   ”No. I don’t want to marry”  to your parents when they pressure you instead of taking our your anger against the poor girl after you marry her!  Even if you forget about ethics and decency, at least think logically….It is better to say No to your parents before you marry ; there is no logic in whining and torturing the girl you married, AFTER you marry.

·         (3)*Please tell your parents you do not want dowry/gifts/”a honeymoon” paid by your father-in-law.

Remember that the girl may keep quiet about you and your parents expecting dowry/gifts, etc but thinks very poorly of you. You would die of shame if you hear, what girls who give dowry think of you and your parents.  These are some of the things you and your parents were called by me and my friends who were discussing your rapacious greed when you loot the girls family in the name of marriage:

Bunch of losers

Sons of bitches

Beggars

Greedy snakes

Dirty bastards

Family of whores and prostitutes.

The rest are unprintable.

Do you really want to demand dowry, when this is the opinion the girl has of you???

·         Remember, the girl’s father has worked as hard as your father. Why should he alone spend for the wedding? Why the hell cant your son-of-a-bitch father, share the expenses??? I am not calling your father son of a bitch, but one irate friend of mine is calling all Indian men, who do not spend for their sons’ wedding as bastards. I know she should be more polite but I also agree that you guys deserve it.

·         Another advise to the families of guys going in for arranged marriage is, “Please do not ask for a “grand wedding” when you guys are not spending  a penny for the marriage! The girl’s family is not a bank for you to loot! Do you guys have any shame or decency at all???

·         Guys. Please do not think you are being smart or clever when you couch your demand for dowry or a grand wedding in honeyed words. The girl and her family are not stupid and can read between the lines. They may be too polite to let you know that they can read your intentions. Please remember that whether you are crass enough to ask for the money upfront or to ask later in a veiled manner…it is the same. You are nothing but a ‘very demanding set of beggars’ or bhikaris as my friend and mother put it. If you want to be thought of as beggars, then go ahead and ask for dowry. If you want respect, then forget about dowry. The irony about today’s Indian guys is that they are so shameless that many openly say, they would rather have the dowry than respect as respect is not of practical use to them!

·         Guys, also realize that it is a very very humiliating and hateful process the girl goes through, when you come to her house with your parents to “see her”…….Girls hate it but have to submit to their parents wishes. Remember, many girls curse you and your parents, and if God exists, their curses may actually work!

·         After coming to the girl’s house, eating like pigs and going away, it is disgusting that you do not have the courtesy to inform the family quickly whether you want to marry the girl or not…you keep the girl and her family wait in a state of tension, for days together. Please do have to courtesy to inform, immediately.

·         Guys in the west, Please do not think that you deserve a beautiful girl who will bring a fat dowry and whose father will spend for a grand wedding, simply because you are in USA.

·         Guys. You should develop social skills and know how to interact. Most of my friends who had to meet guys when their families were looking for grooms, found that the guys going in for arranged marriage have miserable social skills, are poor at conversations(how the hell do they do their jobs as engineers, doctors, etc, when they can’t form 2 decent sentences?) and have no clue, about interacting with women.  These days, girls do not want to be married to a guy just because he is an engineer or doctor or whatever…girls want  husbands with social skills, ability to dress well, interact well with a range of people ….

·         And one comment all my friends have to say to the dozens of spineless Indian  guys in arranged marriages, who are making their wives lives  miserable…because they did not want to marry but were forced to against their wish by their retarded and evil parents…..SHAME ON YOU!

Here is another comment for guys going into arranged marriages….A girl from Andhra who married a doctor(MD medicine) was heard saying this to her friends on her wedding day,  “ We got him quite cheap. Only 18 lakhs!”    …… Are you guys a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder?

Guys going into arranged marriages……Please Please Please get yourselves a conscience, some morals, some respect for yourselves and for women, get yourselves some spine to stand up to your parents, get yourselves a reality check and PLEASE realize that you are not only nothing special but actually quite banal….

·         One thing, I cannot understand about both guys and girls going into arranged marriages is this…..when you do so much research before selecting  a course to study, or before  buying  a house or a car or even a simple pair of jeans, how the hell can you select a life partner, after seeing a girl/guy for a few minutes! Don’t you think, selecting a life partner deserves greater research…don’t you think you need to know your future life partner well , before you agree to marry….

You can always discard a shirt, which you bought in a hurry…it’s no great loss. But can you so easily discard the person you married in a hurry?  This is one mystery of Indian arranged marriages I can never understand. I have seen Indian girls relentlessly going from shop to shop to find the perfectly matching blouse piece for a sari…a girl can spend two days to find the right colour blouse for her sari …..and yet  the same girl, agrees or disagrees  to marry a guy after she meets him for a few minutes!

Before someone says, why are you not telling the same thing for girls going into arranged marriages, let me inform you that girls have a lot less freedom, even today in India…I have seen girls locked up and beaten for refusing to marry the boy chosen  by their parents. This does not happen to boys…they have more freedom.

Lot of Indian girls think that Indian  guys go in for arranged marriages as they are too lazy to exert themselves or too socially clumsy to find a girl on their own…. And they very well  know that all they have to do is  tell their parents the kind of  girl  they want and and their parents will find  many and aksk him to select one!

Visiting Relatives

Three relatives of mine are visiting the US & Canada now. They are 2 women and a man, all in their sixties. While one lady has a Bachelor’s degree and the man is a retired doctor, the other lady has finished high school. All three were born and brought up in villages, but have lived their adult lives  in a major south Indian city and are of middle class background.  
 I have explained their backgrounds above..this is   because I cannot understand, how with this middleclass, urban Indian background and education,   they could still  behave in  really exasperating ways!

All three of my relatives  have children, who have settled in America(USA & Canada). This is their first visit to the USA & Canada. This type of visit is typical of all immigrants to USA & Canada .....The pattern runs like this: kids come here to study, then get a job in USA and then settle here for good. Parents visit to see them and also see the country....parents also visit to help their adult children  by looking after their grand-kids.

Now about my relatives' annoying behaviours!

The behaviour of the 2 women, which bugged me the most was their refusal to sit on the toilets, either at home or in the public toilets. They have this  firm unshakable belief  that the toiletseats are dirty and they do not want any part of their body touching it. They stand to pee ...ergo..there is pee on the toilet seat and on the floor! I end up queuing up outside the  toilet  my relatives use in all public bathrooms, so that I can go in and wipe the toilet seat! I do not want people in North America hating all Indian women, because of these two, messing up the toilets! I have repeatedly and gently told them, to sit and pee but they still mess  up the toilets!

Another  behaviour of theirs which is bugging me is that they avoid eye contact and do not greet when any friendly stranger greets them on the street.  If I happen to be around when this happens, I jump in, smile at the greeter and explain that they do not understand English.

 I cant understand why my folks cannot even return a smile…even if they do not understand the language, they are surely able to get the friendliness of the greeter through his or her body language, and smiles.

Refusal to try any food other than Indian food is another thing which rankles with me! We end up spending a lot of time, hunting for an Indian restaurant in a new city we are sightseeing in…time which could be used for more sightseeing. But my folks insist on Indian and refuse to try anything else. Once when I could not find any Indian restaurant, I took them to a Tim Horton’s and got them a sub. The women pulled out all the meat and vegetables between the two pieces of bread and ate only the bread! One lady especially was put off by dried tomatoes, claiming that  it was meat!

Curiosity about the personal aspects of people, relentless gossip about the relatives and their issues, morbid curiosity about others was another whole set of behaviours I witnessed in my two visiting  lady relatives. I too had gossiped and probably been rude to some extent when  I was in India, years ago…I cannot deny that…but I do not think I was this rude!

The final and most bugging behaviour of theirs was the constant comments (usually negative) and advice coming from these two  women. If I make a list of their advice and comments,  it would be endless! Here are a few comments and advice of theirs.

“This food is too salty in this sambar. “ or

“The salt is too  less in this rasam”.

“Why do you have so many things in your house? Throw out the things.”

“Why don’t you buy another house? This does not have enough storage space”.

“Get rid of your dog. Why do you want a dog?”

"Why did you buy this furniture (patio furniture for our deck) You could have bought some gold jewellery instead”.

"Why do you use artificial jewellery? Why dont you buy gold?"

"Why dont you also join a company? you can earn more"(the lady who made this comment has no clue about the job I do, but feels free to give this advise!)

One lady, especially, has very little positive to say about anyone and makes her comments in a matter-of-fact, bland tone.  From what I can infer, she does not mean to hurt…she simply makes these comments and seems to have no insight about the impact her comments can have on people.
Thinking back on all their comments and conversation, I wonder if they even think, before they talk? They are so quick to comment...they do not even finish seeing or eating or whatever...but are in a rush to comment, criticize or advise!

I keep wondering …Is  it that, in my extended family, brutal honesty is bred into us while  politeness, tact, gentleness, regard for others feelings, social skills, decency, etc  are left out?

Or is it that, I have been out of India and forgotten how rudely  Indians behave…and have got used to the Polite Canadian ways  ….

Frankly, I cant understand why  the behaviour of my visiting relatives, is shocking me…. I had been used to this behaviour when I was in India for the first three decades of my life! My relatives  have not changed...they are the same…but I seem to have changed after coming to Canada and maybe I have become sensitive to these things!
 If I record and replay, even a five minute conversation of my relatives(not just the ones from India..even the ones from Canada and USA)...one can find about 50 brutal, disparaging, condescending, sarcastic, uppity comments and hardly one or two positive comments!
(here is one bit I remember:
Me: We went on a trip to Havana.
Relative whose spouse is a doctor:Oh. Secretaries go to Cuba for a vacation.)
This particular lady puts her foot in her mouth, every single time she talks!

One last sad-funny thing about my relatives was their absolutely materialistic attitudes when they saw the houses of the various cousins they visited. They were impressed by the size of the bigger houses and unimpressed by the smaller houses. They advised the cousins with smaller houses to get bigger ones! They did not spare a thought  about how the person with the  smaller house will feel when they comment like that. They did not try to understand that some people would like to spend their money on things other than houses…that people have big houses for a reason and small houses for a reason.  Their materialistic outlook  was so strong that they failed to appreciate the aesthetic aspects of the beautiful things around them…especially in the smaller houses. They did not seem to even see the original art work in the small houses, the beauty and old world charm of the old houses (they loved the new houses and did not like the older ones), they did not appreciate the friendly lovely neighbours….All they could see was the big size of the houses and newness of the big houses and the things in them….they simply could not even see, let alone appreciate anything else.

I should probably not expect them to have an aesthetic sense similar to mine, considering that we do not share backgrounds and experiences (though we do share the same DNA) but I am still saddened  that  they are not able to appreciate so much of the beauty around them. I think they would be unimpressed and put off if I had shown them creative ways of recycling things or showed them items altered to repurpose them for other uses...I find this altering and reuse of items  very exciting, aesthetically appealing and creative but my two female relatives would rather  throw out the old things and buy new things meant for the job  instead of recycling & repurposing. I am now able to fathom, how creativity is crushed by Indian parents!

I feel  really sorry for one of the ladies whose child has the smallest house of all the cousins…ergo, the least successful of the dozen cousins who migrated to America over the last 25 years!

 She had been happy with her child’s house when she first landed in America . She loved the house and enjoyed it. Once  she started visiting relatives and sightseeing all over USA & Canada and saw the huge houses of her nephews and nieces she seemed to become aware that her child had a 'small' house. I hope that at some time,  she understands that her child is content with what he has and loves his home and  is happy and that happiness is the most important thing…not a huge house or wealth!

I hope my folks stay long enough to appreciate the non-material beauty of America….such as the polite behaviour of people, the safety women have at home, work place and in public places, the respect, comforts and priority given to disabled and  aged people in all places, the attention to detail and aesthetics in buildings, houses, gardens, and even the humble bus-stands, the absence of corruption and hassles (which  the common man in India faces daily). I think they need to live here for at least 6 months to get a deeper understanding of these two countries in the American continent. Right now, they are blown away by the  overtly visible ....they have not yet had time to see and experience all aspects of life here.

 I have been a bit harsh, criticising my folks here. Given more time, they may probably  get a deeper understanding of life in America and slowly evolve. I know for a fact that I did change a lot after coming to Canada. 

Books read in June-July 2012

These are the books from Toronto Public Library  I was/am reading and enjoying. This list includes only those books I really liked and wish to reccomend others to read.

1)Saudi Arabia Exposed:Inside a Kingdom in Crisis by John R Bradley.

2) The Eye of  Jade by Diane Wei Liang

While the first is by a journalist and tells about Saudi Arabia today, the second is a crime fiction and tells about life in China today. Both books are highly readable(Bradley's more readable, though it is not fiction!).

After reading Bradley's book, I was inspired to borrow again and read a crime fiction book set in Saudi Arabia i.e. ' City of veils' by Ferraris. I am also thrilled that her  new book  i.e. Kingdom of Strangers has been released! I am waiting to get my hands on it...Hurry up TPL! Give me the book soon!

Incidentally, Ferraris is an American lady who was married to a Saudi-Palestinian Bedouin when she wrote her first book "Finding Nouf". By the time she wrote her second book, City of veils, she had seperated from him and moved back  to USA. Her books reveal how claustrophobic life is for Saudi women. The more I read books set in Saudi and other Gulf countries, the more I grateful that I was not born there! Other books I read recently set in Saudi Arabia, include The Ruins of us by Keija Parssinen, which reflects life of a Saudi family and the emotional difficulties faced by a son born of an American mother and Saudi father. A Gentleman's game: a queen and country novel by Greg Rucka. This is a thriller about a female assasin of the British government who kills a terrorist.
I did borrow a few other books set in this region but stopped reading half-way through. The books may be good but for some reason, they did not hold my attention i.e. Wolves of the cresent moon, The sand cafe and The desert contract.

A few other books I have booked at TPL as the reviews impressed me include:

American Dervish..I generally read only crime fiction but I am going to read this, though it is not crime fiction. I was impressed by the review and curious about the story.
Lone wolf and Stone rain by Linwood Barclay: both are crime fction. This author is new to me but I liked one book of his I read and so I am reading all of his.
Caught by Harlan Coben..I have never read any book of this guy...but a review of this book revealed that this story also has  a televised sting about sexual predators and I want to read about it. I remember seeing a program on tv which was a sting operation and I had found it very very entertaining!  I know it is bad of me to find this entertaining but I found it so funny when these guys got caught!!!
One last book is 'Decorating Junk market style". I hope  this is the same book I had read and loved a long time ago. I will let you know, when I get this book.
31st July: Yep. This is the same book and I loved browsing through it!
Enjoyed reading Caught but did not like another book by same author i.e. Live Wire.
Enjoyed Kingdom of Strangers too.....a crime fiction set in Saudi
Now looking forward to reading a novel set in India i.e. The Sarishop by Rupa Bajwa.
Once again, I am so immensly grateful to the Toronto Public Library which makes my reading possible...free of cost!
If I were in India, I would not have read even one tenth of what I am reading now because of ..(a).poorly funded  public libraries which do not have english novels ...at least the type I read;(b) few private circulating libraries where one pays to borrow books and they still cannot afford to buy all the books I want...(c)buying books to read is out of question in India as the salary one makes is not adequate...buying 'foreign' titles especially is expensive.

Are traits such as carelessness, laziness and procrastination as bad as 'evil intent' or jealousy?

I had, till now,  been easygoing about certain traits in people  such as laziness, procrastination, inefficiency and so on. These traits did not upset me much and I  would forgive the display of such traits easily.  My reasons for this easy forgiveness about such traits:   Lazy people or procrastinating people(or whatever trait) are basically 'good & decent' people ;  "all human beings have faults";"these people are not evil"; "everyone is careless sometime"; "I too  am careless at times". Infact, I have been very forgiving and accepting of any triats or behaviours which I believed were not "evil' or had 'evil intent' underlying them.

I had however, been very unforgiving  about behaviours such as lying, cheating, stealing, harming others, wilfully hurting others, jealousy, etc. I found these impossibly hard to forgive as I believed that these behaviours were evil or had an underlying 'evil' motive .

Something happened recently that made me rethink my easygoing attitude towards the traits I believed should be forgiven, as they were 'not evil'. I am now, no longer, easy-going about these traits.

Three to four weeks ago, someone close to me was  drastically affected by the laziness, procrastination and inefficiency shown by a HR staff in his organization. Here is the bald, brief version of the story.

  Due to the inefficiency of this staff in HR, my friend  did not get his H1 visa; consequently  the great job and pay  he had been offered a week before was withdrawn.  To continue to stay legally in USA,  he shelled out his meagre savings and quickly enrolled  into a university(a third rate one at that!). By enrolling in this university, he got his student visa and will not get turfed out of USA.  His future plans have been put on hold for one more year..plans including clearing bank loans, getting married,  visiting his family, buying a better car,etc. Thanks to the  inefficiency, procrastination, laziness, lack of knowledge and sheer pig-headedness of this HR staff,  my friend's  path went from prosperity to  basic existence!
 My friend was badly upset for a week but thankfully he has recovered....he is a pretty resilient guy and  I hope he has  not become permanently embittered by this experience!


 Traits such as laziness, procrastination, inefficiency, stupidity, carelessness,  do not fall  on the 'good-evil'  dimension. Yet, these traits or behaviours are NOT innocuous; These traits too  can have terrible effects on people's lives.
The lazy person or careless person  may not have any evil intent when they do things but they can still cause serious harm to others. For example, people have died due to doctor's carelessness; people have been killed by an engineeer's inefficient work on roads and railways; lives have been ruined by procrastination of the people in power. The list goes on and  on.

. A lot of grief can be caused by 'good, decent and well meaning' people who display behaviours  which can negatively impact others lives. Detective Thomas Hauk in 'The Wire' is one example who comes to mind. His carelessness, procrastination and stupidity had such terrible consequences on the lives of others...it was unbelievable and unpardonable.

The sad fact of life is that, there are people with such traits in powerful positions, where they can cause a lot of grief and continue to cause grief, year after bloody year. Yet, they are not removed from their positions or asked to improve or punished! They continue to damage the lives of people by their unchanging stupidity, carelessness, etc.The HR staff I mentioned above, has affected not just one peron's life this year but at least a few! This staff has procrastinated in the previous years too, leading to other employees not getting thier H1 visas in the same way as my friend; yet the management, has not done anything about this!

The same thing is seen in other organizations too. I have seen people, who mess up other people's lives,  Yet these people, continue, in their positions, without any improvement.

In one organization, dealing with mental health, I have seen two people, a psychologist and a psychometrist doing almost zero work, year after year for decades! Yet they have neither been kicked out or reprimended and made to improve. The psychologist has now earned about a million dollars(about 90k per year) doing nothing and so has the psychometrist!!! The work load on thier collegues is more as these two bums dont do any work. If you want to know, they do no other work too at the organization such as teaching students, participating in research or attending to the extra works which are there in any organization. The psychometrist thinks she is fooling everyone by giving a gift to all in her department i.e. a handful of chocolates and a greeting card! Does she think, that the people are fools who will fall for her chocolates??? I am so pissed off with these two but I am not in a position of power to kick them out! I wish I had the nerve to do something about this...but the cowardice which seems to be a malise in either my department or in Canada is affecting me too! 

My favorite moments in childhood

Recalling my childhood days, I have decided that the happiest moments of childhood were when I was reading the Ladybird books for children in the Malleshwaram City Central Library on ? Margosa road or ?Sampige road in the 70s. This library had a large space in front of it (If I remember right, the library was facing the large space of it's own backyard and not the street in front.)
These ladybird books had the  loveliest illustrations and to this day they remain a great favorite of mine. The books I read included Snowwhite and Rosered, Rapunzel, Sleeping beauty, Cinderella, Dick Whittington & his cat, amongst several others. These stories are available in many many forms such as, as a story in an English text book in schools; in a book of  stories for children without illustrations and in  illustrated story books for children.
These stories have also been illustrated in a myriad different styles in different publications;    the Ladybird publication house itself,  has republished the same stories with new styles of illustrations over the years. However it is only this particular artwork  which could put me in a trance!

I discovered through googling,  that  Vera Southgate was the writer and Eric Winter was the illustrator of these lovely pictures. These books have one page of writing followed by one page of art work illustrating the story and these books mesmerized me as a child.  The illustrations were the best part of the books for me. As a child in 70s India, I , of course, did not know a thing about hard-bound books or soft bound books, or what a font or font size is or about the texture of pages of books. Yet,  I think I unconsciously  also appreciated the fact that the books were hardbound; the size and weight of these books were ideal for a child; the font, the size of the font, the textures of the pages( I  remember the texture, now, after more than 35 years!!) were just perfect.
I would literally go into a trance when I read these books. I read these books over and over again, staring for endless hours at the illustrations and daydreaming. I especially loved the ? water colour paintings of cottages (roof covered with thatch/hay) in the middle of the forest which is depicted in many of the stories such as Snowwhite and Rosered, I loved the paintings of the gardens (The witch's garden in Rapunzel) in some books. To me the art work depicted the picture of an ideal, perfect and beautiful world, somewhere out there in England, where I could not go but only dream off.  I simply cannot describe the rapture I felt, while gazing at these illustrations! At that young age, I actually believed that these stories truly happened and that the places and people and animals  did look like it did in the art-work! Those fairy tales seemed to be happening in some heavenly place and I was in Heaven when I read those books. The clothes of the princes and princesses, the palaces, the illustration of the weeping willow tree in one of these books, the forest in which Red Ridinghood walked are unforgettable. I wonder if the impact of the illustrations on me would have  been different if they were in oils instead of water colors. Who knows?
Later I saw several other books and the newer Ladybird book editions of the same stories but none of them were as attractive to me to read as the ones illustrated by Eric Winter. Now when I google, I do see, new illustrations done in various styles such as in Manga style, but they do not enrapture me. I wish the illustrations had never changed but then, who can prevent change? It is as unstoppable as the passage of time!

My heartfelt gratitude to Eric Winter, who I was sad to discover is dead.

Here are links to the  pictures of the book covers of those books.

Below is a link for all  pictures of one book

stories-fairy-tales-&-rhymes/rapunzel/page/1/view/12

http://www.ladybirdprints.com/category/6238/stories-fairy-tales-&-rhymes/rapunzel/page/2/view/12

http://www.ladybirdprints.com/category/6238/stories-fairy-tales-&-rhymes/rapunzel/page/3/view/12

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http://www.ladybirdprints.com/category.php?catid=5966

Above link gives a partial look at the covers of the books I enjoyed.  

Tumbe Hoovu in Toronto

Just a while ago, I was bemoaning the fact that certain plants, birds, insects, I grew up with in Bangalore are now missing. One of the plants I mentioned was the tumbe hoovu(Leucas aspera-common Leucas)
 I was surprised and happy to see the Tumbe Hoovu plant, being sold at Toronto's Canadian Super Store today(June 3rd 2012) in their gardening section. This store was selling the red Tumbe Hoovu plant  i.e. the Salvia Coccinea and not the white or pink flower ones, common in Bangalore, in the past. Years ago, the red Tumbe Hoovu  was rare in Bangalore, while the pink flowers were commonly seen in house gardens. The white Tumbe flowers(Leucas Aspera) grew wild, in empty lots, farm lands and at times in homes. This white flower was supposed to be a favorite of Lord

Shiva! (Any wild flower, which are not popular was supposedly

liked by Shiva. I wonder why? Even the flower of the milk weed is

supposeldy a Shiva favorite. Are the unwanted, unpopular less beautiful, common things liked by Shiva...Like ashes, Bilva leaves, Tumbe flowers, snakes, etc)

The botanical name for the two flowers are different i.e. Leucas 

Aspera and Salvia Coccinea, that I wonder, if we, in India, are 

calling two different flowers of two different species by one name

i.e. Tumbe Hoovu?

The pleasures of poverty

        

My childhood days were like any of those Bangaloreans living middleclass lives or lesser in the seventies. We did not have what we do have today: we did not have a telephone, gas stove, fridge, television, furniture such as a dining set, car, ‘own’ house and so many other things we own now. (We did have an electric and kerosine stove,  immersion heater for hot water for bath, a radio and an iron box)Today, my house is overflowing with books and clothes and electronic and electrical gadgets, and so many other things while the house of my childhood was almost bare.

That Spartan life however had countless happy hours which I remember to this day; I think I am missing that happiness now, because of the overeasy and abundant availability of things . The pleasure one finds in small acquisitions is great when one has very few things around. I still remember I had a small wooden box and I had filled it with chalk pieces, ‘balapa’ i.e. another type of a chalk piece, bits of candle, a matchbox and some broken and some intact marbles I had found on the road. I think I also had a stash of safety pins and hairpins. This collection was precious to me and I often opened the box to look and enjoy my store of things. I also remember feeling immensely proud and happy when the electricity failed and my grandmother asked me to give my store of small candles. Todays kids have tons of toys, games, books, electronic toys and what not. But I doubt that anyone of them experience the pride and joy I did when I gave those candles to my grandma !

I remember picking several objects on the road and bringing them home as I thought it would be useful to me or my family at some time. Usually the items were nails, bits of metal, hairpins and I cant remember what else. Even these items were a source of great pleasure to me (Was hoarding, a habit I developed early?)

I seem to remember having more happy times when I had less of worldly possessions ; I have gradually become richer and I did buy things I had wanted. However there has been no proportionate increase in the happiness or excitement when I acquire these things. I have also noticed that when I had less things,  I used them more.

There was a time when there were a mere handful of books(mostly Enid Blyton & Indrajal comics) at home. I spent so many happy hours reading them over and over, and each time of reading/rereading was a pleasure.

I would get storybooks for each birthday and I would read the books over and over again till my next birthday ! (There were’t any public or private circulating libraries near my house then;). There were a few favourites which I have read so often that the books practically fell apart.

Now I have tons of books at home and there are so many of them, I have not read at all and several half read and discarded books. The same goes for clothes, dvds, vessels in the kitchen, vases, footwear, ornaments, etc. The more I could afford and the more things, I got, the less I actually used them. These days, I seem to  have stuff, lying unopened for months after buying ! Now I seem to get more excitement in the search, hunt and chase for an object than in actually using it. The excitement seems to disappear once I have acquired it and there is only a little bit of pleasure when I use it. Which is really really sad!

The same applies for movies and television. (There was no television in Bangalore in the 70s and my house did not have a television till the mid 80s). I was taken to one film a month as a child and I remember running the movie in my head with various changes ( I am the heroine !) daily and getting a kick out of it. ( This type of daydreaming is the cause of my poor academic performance). I have spent countless hours in these fantastic daydreams. When my dad bought our first television, I did not miss any program, however boring it was ! If you remember, there was only one government run channel initially and the programs were beamed only for a few hours every evening. And the programs were boring documentary types.

Subsequently, movies were shown every week on television and I obsessively tried to see all but of them. However, I could no longer remember them all and even started getting the story lines mixed up ! Now I have become so picky, that very few movies hold my attention or interest. I wonder if I would have been different that is enjoyed the movies, however mediocre, if I had been deprived?

I am happy to say, I still derive a great deal of pleasure out of television serials even today ! This maybe because I deprive myself of cable ! I don’t have cable ( after getting into a major argument with my cable provider) and get only about 6 channels daily of which one is French and two of foreign languages and I end up watcfhing only three channels. I really enjoy seeing the serials available on these channels and I watch them in spite of the sometime-blurred and double images !

 I have also bought a few dvds of some shows and watch these same dvds  once in a while. I pray to God that I don’t ever lose the ability to enjoy shows!

I think the word I was looking for while writing all the above paragraphs was “jaded”. Now people are jaded with the surfeit of things they have... while in the past, due to scarcity, they could appreciate and enjoy the few things they had.

I can remember all the toys I had as a kid though I am in my 40s now. But my nieces cannot remember the toys they bought last year I think ! They have so much and therefore play less with each toy and do not care to remember them.

There is a lot to be said for poverty or deprivation. I definitely got more pleasure out of each book/movie/toy/thing when I had very few of them or had very limited access.

Now, however, trying to find things which interest me seems more fun than after I find them and  actually participating/enjoying the activity. For example, when I go to borrow a dvd movie, I scan several and can rarely find any movie which interests me enough to borrow. I go to a library and browse through many and often come out with nothing. But the browsing gives me more happiness than seeing or reading what I find!

I am wondering what could make me so indifferent to things I enjoyed so much in the past. Am I jaded? Am I depressed? Am I getting old and is it true that the older you get, the less you enjoy ? Am I becoming picky and so it is only a narrow range of things which I enjoy instead of the entire spectrum of books or movies or whatever? Is it a change only I experience or a lot of others do? Am I becoming tired or lazy? It’s difficult for me to pinpoint what reason is affecting me. It may be a combination of them or only one of them. Am I losing the ability to enjoy things?

For example, my home in Toronto is filled with tons of books  which I am yet to read ......I dont have the 'mood' to read. However, when I go to India and cant lay my hands on books to read, I read whatever I can lay my hands on without being picky ! 

When I am in a place with limited access to things I love, I revert to my childhood practice of  completely using up what little is accessible and enjoy it ! Does the easy availability to things lessen my ability to enjoy them???  Is it that I can enjoy only when I am deprived and given things in meagre quantities ?  Is it that I can enjoy only when I have suffered a bit like waiting for it or suffer in some other way? Does owning things make me feel comfortable/complacent about owning and make me postpone actually using or enjoying the item? The same goes for the dvds I have, clothes, accessories. Food too. When I have one sweet or snack item at home I relish it but when I have stocked up, I just don’t feel like eating anything ! (maybe I am lying about food. I think  food is something which I am never tired of or feel 'jaded' about !)

I had very few clothes (Wednesday was the day we wore coloured clothes instead of the uniform to school) in my early days and I remember all the clothes I had then and how much I loved those few clothes and the joy I got wearing them. Now, either because we (my family) are better off than before or because Indian society itself has changed, there seems to be an abundance of all things . Yet I do not see a proportionate increase in satisfaction with this abundance. Children today have more clothes than I ever had and yet them seem to want more and are critical of what they have. The same goes for the variety of games, toys, foods available for kids today. I can imagine adults feeling jaded but children jaded?? And bored with what they have and always wanting something bigger or better or more exciting ? I think unless, kids (and all of us) experience some deprivation, they will be headed towards a life of constant boredom and constantly seeking something “more” thrilling or exciting or whatever.

And this makes me think of another idea. Is it that today’s children’s attention span or interest span is getting shorter? I mean that , children or yester years would be happy with one game or toy for many months before losing interest in it but today’s kids, explore a toy for a few days and then their interest fades and they want something new to stimulate their interest. I am not saying all kids are like this or all toys hold all kids interest for a short span of time. I don’t think the constant craving for something new and exciting is so bad. But I am concerned that these days, objects hold one’s interest for such a short period of time and one wants a new item, even before fully trying out the item in hand.

I wonder to what extent this problem is fostered by the fact that rich and indulgent parents frequently buy toys for their kids . If you buy a new toy everyday, why should a child play with a toy you bought last month?

Below is an account of what I went through to reach this stage of ennui and short interest span ….my experiences of financial insecurity followed by security and the pattern of enjoyment during the financially insecure period followed by a sort of ennui during financial security.

As I have told elsewhere in this blog, I emigrated from India to Canada and we had to start from scratch. We had to find jobs, live on less so as to not run out of money before we find a job, manage on what we got in our 6 suitcases until we got jobs. Though we were tense and focussed on getting a job, we did have the time to enjoy lots of things. We had a blast reading books from the libraries, buying used books from the Goodwill stores, watching shows on a black and white tv (someone had thrown out a black and white tv set on the kerb and we got it home), taking long walks and exploring the city, chatting with our families on yahoo chat, watching people ( and their clothes, hairstyles, jewels and accessories, ), etc.

Over time, we got jobs and started buying the things we could only enjoy through shop windows. And slowly the pleasure and joy started decreasing and the same sense of ennui set in. Now I feel the pleasure seems to be more in the chase to acquire something and once the object is got, it is used briefly and lies forgotten in some corner of my home.

One of the chase related rushes I get is when I am bidding for something on ebay. Fortunately I have cured myself of this ebay bidding habit and saved myself a lot of time and money ! ( Or rather, my office cured me of it…I was bidding at work and now the ebay site is blocked at my office computer)

Sometimes I think, I would like to start again, from nothing, as the excitement of the struggle lets me experience a plethora of emotions: I could do with the sense of achievement, the pride, the thrills but I could definitely do without the fears and tensions one has while struggling. The boy who repaired his cycle without any help from the father enjoys the sense of achievement which the boy who was helped by his father cannot.

Enjoying life beats the jaded feeling and ennui which some of us have. If it takes financial insecurity or job insecurity or “not being” rich, to appreciate and enjoy and experience things, then so be it. Many parents ( my relatives and friends and so many good people out there) want to provide their kids with ‘everything” and especially those things they wanted when they were kids but dint have. Parents also want their kids to ‘enjoy’ and ‘not suffer’ or ‘struggle’. I think they need to rethink about the benefits of ‘letting their kids struggle to achieve. They need to rethink the benefits of providing ‘everything’ to their kids. I see this a lot in parents who have had major transitions in their lives…those who moved from villages to the city, from India to other countries, from a lesser socio-economic status to higher. Maybe all parents have this need to provide everything for their kids, I don’t know.

I don’t have kids so it is easy for me to comment and criticize parents ! But I do understand the joys they feel when they buy their kid something ( I am now becoming convinced that parents get a greater kick out of buying their kids things than the kids get in playing with them !) .

I really appreciate the super rich parents who have to exercise discipline when bringing up their kids ! Imagine Bill Gates kids demanding sweets or toys or rides daily . He can afford it and he may want to give it to them to show his love but he has to ‘not’ give in to their excess demands if he wants them to develop good discipline or whatever….. Infact, I think it is easier for a economically ill off parent than for a rich one to bring up kids with discipline ! The ill off one does not need to be disciplined to not buy his kid…there is no struggle as there is no money ! But the rich parent, has a huge struggle on his hands ! He can easily buy but should not . Boy ! I hate that kind of a struggle as I have no discipline at all !

I keep telling my sister, that adversity or deprivation can be a blessing than otherwise as it gives her a chance to struggle and this struggle gives her so many things which wealth (by wealth, I mean, whatever is the opposite of adversity and deprivation) cannot give…the joy of achievement, the struggle which keeps her on her feet and saves her from boredom, the pride of doing it on her own without help. More importantly, the knocks from a struggle harden her and she is better prepared for any new knocks life has for her in future. The failures during a struggle, the taxing of one’s mind and body, all go towards building up the resilience and strength of the person. To be ‘lucky’ and hence to be deprived of struggle is like the body being deprived of essential exercise :one may become weak without facing adversity.

Wealth or comfort or support (support from family for one) really can be an obstacle in itself in that one misses out on valuable experiences of learning, growing, acquiring maturity, and misses on the emotions which follow a struggle: relief, happiness, thrill, anger, sadness. Remember, even emotions like sadness or anger or sense of failure can have positive consequences and not experiencing them can be a loss.

Children growing in families where they lack nothing and children from families where there is some deprivation are equipped differently to face life. I am not saying that one is better than the other. But I think I really liked my “to some extent deprived” childhood.

Deprivation and poverty also has a few other fantastic benefits. Deprivation stokes so many good qualities in a person, most importantly,  empathy, compassion  and creativity. It helps develop a lot of other good qualities too but I admire compassion and creativity the most.
 People who are deprived, put themselves in others shoes and picture what they are experiencing. People who have never faced want, often dont seem to get the suffering of someone who is facing difficulties. (if they cant have bread, let them have cake). Having faced unemployment, low salary, difficult landlords, I can easily put myself in the shoes of people who have faced similar circumstances and help them or at least be empathetic. However, relatives of mine, who are basically decent people and who have never faced unemployment, etc lack the imagination to understand the difficulties of the unemployed and lack empathy. They blame the unemployed person and make terribly unsympathetic remarks. When I try to defend the unemployed person  or ask them to put themselves in the shoes of the unemployed person, they simply cannot or will not!

Necessity is the mother of invention sums up what I have to say, rather neatly. But I am going to put in my two cents worth here! In the 70s and 80s when I was a child and teen, living a rather frugal life, we would use things in multiple ways. We would not rush to buy things but try to figure out how to manage with what we had at home. Today, in this world of surplus and availability of things for everything, there is no scope for our recycling & creativity. Even if I want to recycle or reuse something creatively, my husband prevents it...he wants the right thing for the right task. He does not want to for example, use the plastic box in which we bought the litter to be used as a garbage bin. He wants to buy an official garbage bin! We would tear up old pants and stitch them into bags to be used for grocery shopping. Now we simply throw out the pants and buy bags for grocery shopping or worse, get the groceries in plastic bags from the shops. I can give hundreds of such examples of creative use and recycling in the past when we had few things and how it has been replaced by abundance and wastefulness today.

This which follows is vaguely related to the stuff I wrote above. I am throwing it in anyway for what it’s worth…….Another odd quirk I have noticed in me---I enjoy some songs (Like Kid Rock’s sweet home Alabama and Duffy’s Mercy). But I lose interest completely if I own the cd. I however get a great deal of joy if I hear it by chance on the radio or someone else’s system. Is it that the moment I own some things, I no longer care for it? Go figure.

What causes Poor Judgement?

I have been thinking about this issue since several years ; My thoughts about this issue were triggered by the copious evidence of poor judgement displayed by  my friends, relatives and others whom I know(and me too at times!)


Why are poor judgements and poor choices 'repeatedly' made by  people with (a)at least average level of  intelligence, (b)education(at least a Bachelor's degree) and inspite of (c) being surrounded by well meaning and sensible advisors/friends? 
 Why do these  people refuse to learn or change when they fail? Why  do they continue to show the same poor judgement and poor choices which leads them  to further failure?
Is Judgement a cognitive function like intelligence or is it a personality trait or is it something affected by emotions and intelligence & your current harmone level? Is poor judgement something you learn or  is it something you are born with? 
Is it  poor judgement or is it just sheer bad luck? (It cant be bad luck if it happens again and again)


The reason poor judgement bothers me so much is that I have seen heads of Indian families (as heads, they control the money, decision making power and power over the lives of all other family members) with poor judgement shattering the lives of everyone in the family... not once or twice but for decades !  Sometimes even the  'as-yet unborn' generation is affected by the poor judgment skills of these tyranical heads of families !


Just looking around half a dozen families I know intimately, I can come up with several examples of poor judgement! Extrapolating from this, the extent of poor judgement in the Indian middle class population seems to be about 50%  or more!


While I am not going to write about the details of poor judgements I have observed, I am going to guess at the factors driving their poor judgement decisions. These are just my guesses. I hope this list will help me to get insight into my own behaviour and help me recognize if I am falling into a pattern of making poor choices or showing poor judgement.


(1)Greed and the intense desire to get rich quick seems to be the motivation behind the poor judgements and decisions of a couple I know.They might have also been driven by the (2)desire to out-do their relatives and friends. The sad part is that they are now in a severe financial mess which in turn has lead to health, emotional and social problems.


(3)Poor planning and (4) poor knowledge of the matter they are getting into is another factor. India is one place where 'informed decision making' is conspicious by it's absence! People make major decisons involving lakhs of rupees with little or no knowledge of what they are investing in. Why dont people  try to get as much information as possible before they get involved in something? I can think of a few reasons why. (5)Impulsivity,(6) Impatience, (7)inability to think things through are behaviours observed in some of the people with poor judgement. They do not have the patience to research something fully before diving into it. It may be a business venture; it may be selection of a course which determines your career for your life; it may be selection of your spouse. People have bought expensive new cars with little or no research done before buying! (8)Absence of available and accessible information also prevents people from being fully informed before they make a decision. This is really sad as these people are really not responsible if they make a poor choice and face  failure...they could not access information to make wiser decisions. There are people in rural areas, people in poor sections of society in India who have no access to English, no access to sensible or educated advisors, no access to the internet, no access to information through the mass media. At least 50% of people in India or more fall into this category.
 Many people in villages have been misguided  either deliberately by malicious and evil persons or by well-meaning but unwise people. The money lenders who loan huge sums of money to farmers knowing that they will default are the malicious ones for example. The aged farmer who tells the younger one that it will "definitely rain" and to go ahead with the seed sowing during a drought year would probably be the well-intentioned one who misguides people unintentionally.
 People have become victims of poor judgement displayed by others who control their lives. Forced Arranged Marriages which fail is a perfect example. The bride or groom have no say about whom they can marry and have to marry the person chosen for them by their parents or other elders. If the marriage does not work, then, they become victims. While some brides and grooms can be assertive and  can successfully have a say in their marriages, many brides from rural areas, from repressive and autocratic families do not really have a chance. A student who has no aptitude for medicine but forced to study medicine by his father and who fails in his studies and ends up as a drop out is another example of becoming a victim of someone else's poor judgement.
(9)Lack of common sense is another cause of poor judgement. I am sure dear reader, you can come up with several examples of your own for this.
I have seen several people in India who will(10) not go to professionals or professionals with a good reputation to get their work done. They try to do it with the help of amateurs or unskilled people and have huge losses and failures. Yet they never learn! I remember a couple with no business experience start a business of exports. They went to a professional consultant who warned them to avoid expanding the business too rapidly. Yet this couple thought the professional was a fool and did not listen to them. They went ahead, made all the mistakes the consultant had warned them about and crashed really badly. Not trusting professionals is a major type of poor judgement displayed by majority of the people I know.(Including me!) I have seen people take the advise of a nurse over a doctor's; Patients and their families prefer to take the advise of the janitor  in the hospital than consult a doctor!
(11)Belief in superstitions, belief in God to the extent that one jumps off a plane without a parachute, belief in astrology, black magic,Maya and Mantras are all the basis of several people's poor judgements in India. Praying at the temple daily instead of studying to pass in an exam; donating to a temple or spending time and money on religious rituals instead of making sensible and  reliable plans for a venture are some common  examples of poor judgement. One example is of a friend of mine whose business started failing and instead of analyzing why the business is failing and doing something to repair that, he went to a Vaastu consultant. The Vastu guy told my friend that the garage was bringing them bad luck and their luck would improve after they demolished the garage. He went ahead and demolished the garage! But no luck with the business! I can give hundreds of examples of people who have made major decisions based on such superstitious beliefs and brought on tremendous ruin upon themselves.(I am no exception! )
A sad example of poor judgement which I have seen repeated in at least 3 different households is an astrologer telling one of the daughters in the family that she will marry a rich person. The girl believes this to the extent that she refuses to marry though she gets several 'decent' proposals by arguing  that they are not rich enough. As these families  were only into arranged marriages and the girls did not have a chance to meet and choose their own husband, ( in the 1970s and 1980s) they remained unmarried for life. Not only that, their younger sisters too could not marry....in most families the younger one cannot marry until the older one is married off;( if the younger one gets married before the older one, then it is impossible for the older one to get married as people would suspect "something" is wrong with the older one!) There are these women, now in their fifties, who remain single, due to the poor judgement and sutbborness shown by one elder sister!
What is the cause of this poor judgement i.e. this irrational (or least a belief leading to failure) and strong belief in superstition? I really do not know....It does not amount to a delusional disorder or schizophrenia as they are doing well in all other areas. I think it is an immature or childish magical belief one has...that a miracle is going to happen and I dont have to work hard and plan sensibly...God will take care of it sort of thing; Or the astrologer has predicted such a wonderful irresistable thing (you will marry a rich guy) that you WANT & WISH it to be true and will reject all guys you perceive as not rich as 'not the one for me'. Analyzing myself in these superstitious situations(praying desperately to God and offering up bribes so that I get something I badly want such as a visa to go to USA!) I see myself, at that point in time, experiencing a great deal of anxiety and these prayers and belief that God will help, reduces my anxiety a lot. Once the anxiety reduces, I am able to function. If all people beleive in superstitions for this reason, then anxiety reduction is a major cause of  superstitious beliefs...leading to poor judgement. Ergo, are beliefs in superstitions, Vaastu, Black Magic, Poojas and Rituals, Maya and Mantras, nothing but a type of a ineffective or neurotic-psychotic Ego defence mechanism?


(12)Poor assessment of one's own abilities...usually overestimation of one's capacities coupled with (13)unrealistic optimism is a major cause of poor judgement and consequent failure. My favorite example for this is the millions of PUC/12th grade students in India who opt for engineering, medical, courses, though their scores in PUC/Grade 12 indicate they have little or no hope of success in studying these tough technical courses. I have seen scores of students who could barely get 50% in mathematics of grade 12 level opting to study engineering where the level of mathematics would be tougher. While counselling a few of these students I wondered why they are so stubborn about their 'wrong' choice and not ready to change to a course, more suitable for thier capacities. The driving force for their apparent poor judgement or inappropriate choice of course were : the need to tell that they  got into 'an engineering college' was a tremendous need. Whether they get through engineereing or not at the end of 4 years does not immediatly  matter .....Their 'self-esteem  now' is what mattered. Many students self-esteem was tied to the fact that they are studying engineering or medicine. They do not want to feel like a 'loser' which they will if they do not get into these courses. Hopefully, things have changed in the current century. Now I find more students opting for other courses and their self-esteem does not seem to be tied up to this issue.
I am not saying that one should not try something unless one is sure one wins. But if one has good judgement, one will definitely not go overboard, investing in something where the chances of failing are high.
Poor assessment of the abilities of the people you love, bias, blind trust are also factors leading to poor judgements and decision making, especially where loved ones are involved. Repeatedly believing your alcoholic husband will stop drinking though he has never attempted(but merely keeps promising) is one  example of poor judgement caused by  blind love or blind trust.

I asked my husband what factors cause poor judgement in people and he added two more to this list. (14) Inability to learn from past failures. He said that some people fail to learn from a mistake and keep taking similar decisions, making the same choices over and over again , hoping that the next time, they will miraculoulsy succeed...that their failure was not because of something they did wrong. The second cause of poor judgements according to him is (15)lack of experiencing appropriate emotions when they fail. He called it a mood disorder but I am not sure that I agree with mood disorder. He thinks that these people do not go through the grief, sense of loss and failure when they face the consequenses of their poor decisions but appear to be untouched. Normal people feel distressed when they fail but these people do not seem to be affected by the enormity of the consequences of their failure . I have also seen some of them  recover pretty quickly after a major failure compared to those with good judgement. Are they shallow?  Dont they feel any pain ?I simply cannot understand this.

(16) Many people with poor judgement   do not take responsibility for their failure but blame bad luck, others, etc. They  lack insight about their poor judgement, they are arrogant and free from any qualms! They simply want "another chance". Give them another chance, they mess up again and still want another chance. This goes on till they die... if they are supported by soft-hearted (& soft-headed) families and friends  they never ever learn. I have seen families financially bailing out a family member repeatedly and getting themselves into a financial mess. The guy they are bailing out simply asks to be bailed out one last time and he goes ahead and makes the same stupid things and loses money again! When you ask the guy with poor judgement to review why he failed the last time, to analyze, etc, he does not want to "dwell on the past" but move on to the next venture! This once again shows their impatience,  their superficial approach and their refusla or inability to analyze throughly the  cause of thier failure and inability to make revised plans next time. I have seen this behaviour  in so called "professors" of universities, doctors, etc and so I can imagine how the rest of the world can be. 

Addicts and gamblers seem to show the same  behaviour shown by people with poor judgement:
(17)(a) There is no learning,(b) they make the same mistakes,(c) they cannot change.
 One frequently seen behaviour among people with poor judgement is the fact that they argue and defend their poor decisons and judgements by resorting to the theoritical profits or theoritical successes they would have made if things did not go wrong. I am so sick of hearing these arguments that I want to slap the person ...but usually these statements come from elders whom I cant slap!
"If the orders were not cancelled, I would have made 50 lakh profit"; "If it had rained this year, I would have grown 20 quintals of ragi"; "If that guy hadn't cheated me, I would have finished the construction". The number of  ifs, poor decision makers come up is infinite! 
 Could (18) lack of touch with reality or ìnadequate touch with reality be another cause of poor judgement? I am not saying that these people with poor judgement are schizophrenic or psychotic but they are not as aware of the ground reality as they should be and so they make poor decisions. Lack of touch with the ground reality is one issue which I see very often and which really really perplexes me....When one tries to make some of these people aware of the ground realities and improve their choices or judgement, they continue to be blind or adamant and refuse to acknowledge ground reality...Why? Some  refuse to acknowledge ground realities inspite of warnings because they are so "confident they know better'; some are probably aware but will not admit it to you and make changes for whatever reason(yes men & sycophants dont dare argue with a boss but pretend that his plans are wonderful) Denial,a defence mechanism spoken about by Freud is a major culprit responsible for poor judgement.
 (19) Optimism is one blinker which prevents one from being in touch with ground realities.
(20)Wishful thinking and(21) refusal to even consider things may not go as planned are other factors. Refusal to give a margin for error is one behaviour I have seen in my dad which drives me crazy and leads to such failures.
Patriotic NRIs arriving at India and opening NGOs to help the needy in India and running back to where they came from because they were not aware of the Indian ground reality when they decided to open the NGO is one example I can think of.
(22)Rigid thinking and refusal to change , inflexibility and refusal to change inspite of obvious evidence is another cause of poor judgement. I have seen people repeatedly trust someone who has failed them; stick to an idea inspite of the idea not working out and so on.

There are situations where people have seemingly shown poor judgement. But these are the type of people I love! They are people who have good judgement and know something will fail...yet they go ahead with it because of noble reasons which are really touching. A moving story of poor judgement I read (maybe in the readers digest) was about  a soldier who went back to bring his dying friend during a war. While bringing his friend back, he himself was mortally wounded; he returned to the Base with  his now dead friend . His seargent sorrowfully asked him what was the point in returning to bring back his friend; he surely knew, he would be shot if he went back? The dying man replied, "Going back to bring him was not a waste Sir. My friend's last words to me were"  I knew you would come back for me".
There are people who make certain choices even though they know that it will fail; they make this apparently poor decision or  show poor judgement because "it is the right thing to do". What do you say of such people? That they are showing poor judgement or what?


 Right now in India, corruption is so rampant, that anyone ethical is bound to fail in whatever they try  i.e. he who is ethical  is showing poor judgement! Unethical people, who are morally bankrupt are succeeding in life.


In this wretched India, I feel totally torn....doing what is right is wrong i.e you will fail if you do the right thing.  Doing the wrong thing will help you succeed! What do you do in this situation!!! For example, you will get your site registered only if you pay a bribe; if you dont, you will running to that government registration office for years to come! So do you want to show 'good judgement' and pay the bribe and get on with it or do you do the right thing, refuse to bribe, and be left running pillar to post to simply get your site registered!(By the time you get your plan for your house construction approved, get the water, electricity, sewage, phone connections, etc...you will have bribed a dozen or more times!)

 Given the rampant corruption, what is Good Judgement in the Indian setting? The operational definition for Good Judgement in countries and cultures like India would be the statement, "To succeed by hook or crook is evidence of Good Judgement in India".


With the above paragraph, I am trying to tell you dear reader, good judgement is context-based!   Judgement is sensitive to place, time, context, people concerned, etc. What is considered a good judgement in one place, at a certain time, in a certain context, may be considered poor in a different context.




I am adding more to this list of causes of poor judgement when I recall some more. I am stopping for now
One more thing......Could (23)Hope be a cause for poor judgement? Hope is such a tricky, emotion laden thing, that one cannot lightly decide if a certain  decision made because of hope, was a good or  poor decision. One example is of a friend of mine whose son was dying of cancer. While the Canadian hospitals told he has no hope and only a few days to live, the American doctors promised them a "new cure". My friend borrowed a considerable sum of money, took his son to USA for treatment and lost his son inspite of the 'new cure'. He was furious and bitter. He did not want to take the loan as he did not believe in this new cure he said but that he did it to please his wife, the mother of the dying son. Now they had lost thier son and were saddled with a huge loan. They are retired and have to work again to clear this loan. But, how does one, try to 'instil good judgement in them' and  prevent them from taking the loan, when it was to save their son's life?
It's not really easy to decide some people's judgements as bad or foolish. Their bad judgements are based on emotions such as love, hope, kindness, trust, happiness, sadness and I find it so difficult to fault these people!

(24)Stress is another factor leading to poor judgement and poor decisions being made. People seem to loose all reason and make  terribly foolish decisons when under stress.
(25)Any form of emotional disorder, psychological or psychiatric disorders also lead to a person making flawed judgements. One may not be mentally ill but go through emotional problems like anxiety, depression, anger, stress, jealousy, hatred at some point in time...and any judgement made during the experience of these emotions can lead to the judgement being flawed: An anxious motorist will make mistakes  due to wrong judgements when driving; a depressed person will not be able to judge or assess a business plan as well as a calm, undepressed person of equal calibre; a person's jealousy will blind him to the goodness in his rival's personality;
In the context of psychological disorders, I would like to add obsessions as a cause of poor judgement. Let me explain by an actual example......I have a relative who is obsessed with his agricultural land..........he is so obsessed by this land that he neglects all other issues in his life, even priorities such as his daughter's marriage! He has completely lost all sense of what is a priority and what is not...he is unable to put his agriculture work on the back-burner and focus on his daughter's marriage which is in 8 weeks time. (It's not agriculture that he is focussed on...he's focussed on a fool's errand of building a fence round his land..land which is arid and has yielded nothing all these years...everyone has dissuaded him from this task but he is borrowing money, forcing his daughters to lend him money to build this fence....He is not bothered that he has no money for a wedding coming up in 8 weeks time but he is raging about not having money to build this worthless fence!!! I am sure he is mentally ill, considering his age(late 70s, his utter lack of judgement in all that he has done over the past 20-30 years; but as he is the head of his family and extremely autocratic;  it is impossible to question(he does more of these foolish things if anyone questions him and so people have stopped questioning him, except when they can no longer bear it)him and it is almost impossible to live with him; he has spent his entire life, wasting lakhs of rupees in one foolish venture after another; hhe refuses to give up!.......What I am trying ot say here is that mental illnesses can lead to poor judgements; even slight distortions of thinking can lead to poor judgements; one should as often as possible, sit back, observe one's own acts and decisions wiht detachment and check for poor judgement calls; one can also ask others to give an unbiased opinion of what they think of our decisions........take care not to ask this of a sychophant however!
 Even 'positive' emotions such as love can lead to poor judgement. When one is in love or infatuated, one can lose one's objectvity and make poor judgement calls about the person one is in love with! How many 'bright','smart','shrewd' people have been taken for a ride by the person they were infatuated with as they lost their head and their judgement?
 Psychologists have proved through experiments that people make errors when under stress; people make errors when doing multiple tasks simultaneously.

Beauty at what cost?

An Australian immigrant to Canada told that he found the sight of Rajasthani women walking the sandy desert in their colourful skirts and jewellery, with pots of water on their heads a beautiful sight. I told him, it may look beautiful to you but believe me, those women are certainly not happy carrying water pots on their heads, walking the long distance, in the blazing sun, from the well to their houses and then continue with their household chores of cooking! He disagreed and wished that, that aspect of Rajasthan would not change due to modernization.

I found his wish both cruel and thoughtless. Here is a guy, who has 24 hour water & electricity supply, a fan if he is hot and a heater if he is cold, a car to drive even to the nearest store instead of walking and all the thousand comforts which one takes for granted and  not even notice in Canada. He wants the women in Rajasthan to live in such suffering for "aesthetic" reasons!

This is what irks me about the modern people. They assume that "simple" is beautiful or "simple is good" and want "others" to follow that life style while they have their modern comforts and luxuries. City folks moan about the changes happening and the loss of the tribal culture and rural lifestyles; yet they want for themselves,  the latest and best gadgets in the market!

 This train of thought reminds me of what I heard when I visited Udaipur in Rajasthan.

 A lorry driver in Udaipur commented to me that his brother was a camel driver and was unable to get a bride;   all the girls in the village wanted to marry  lorry drivers who earn more and can keep them in greater comfort than a camel driver. None of the girls wanted anything to do with a camel driver! To get his brother married, he had to first  get his brother a lorry and a driver's licence!

Below is a news item from Bangaloremirror.com which shows the hardships faced by women in Gujarat and how they refuse to marry so as to avoid a lifetime of physical labour and hardship.

Due to an acute water crisis in two villages of Gujarat’s Vadodara district, would-be brides are fighting shy of marrying into families in Jetpur and Devaliya villages. The reason is that they have to trudge distances to fetch water in the scorching summer heat.

The two villages, with a total population of about 3,000 people, are situated about 30 km from the Sardar Sarovar dam project on Narmada river.

Member of Narmada district panchayat, Harish Vasava, said that this has been the situation over the past few years. “Parents refuse to marry off their daughters here due to non-availability of permanent drinking water,” said Vasava.

Sahida Banu who lives in Devaliya village says they are in no position to offer drinking water to guests. “Instead, we prefer to offer a bottle of cold drink,” said Sahida. “Water is very precious for us. We have to walk kilometres a day with buckets of water.”

Nafisa Banu from Jetpur village said that finding a bride for young men is a problem. “The underground water is undrinkable due to the salinity.”

“The water problem has led to health hazards for villagers,” said sarpanch of Devaliya, Neeta Bhil.

Vasava said that though water from Narmada is supplied to north Gujarat, Saurashtra, Kutch and Rajasthan after the construction of the dam on the river, people in these villages still face water crisis.
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Likewise, there are people who choose a hard life, not for the sake of 'aesthetics' but under a misguided belief that a physically hard life is "more honest" or "keeps one healthy and fit". My father is one of these annoying persons who believe in physical work instead of using technology to make life comfortable and he is also autocratic enough to impose this on my poor mother and other hapless members in my family. For example he prefers to draw water from the well by pulling the bucket up with a rope than using the motor pumpset to draw the water. He prefers to buy the milk by walking to the milk booth daily morning than having it delivered at home. He wants my mother to ground the chutney by hand, in the granite stone pestle and mortar instead of using the electric mixer. The list goes on.

Why the hell do these people (like my dad) not realize that the time spent on physical labour could be better used to do cognitive activities such as learning a new skill or reading; could be used to relax, to socialize with friends, to contemplate, day dream, think, play, etc? Why this insistence on torturing oneself and others by doing things manually for hours together instead of with technology in seconds?

The resistence to use of anything new is seen often in many third world countries and there are many reasons for this. Unshakeble belief that the old customs are good and new are bad; that the 'ancients knew better than us new-fangled people'; that anything modern or western is evil or at least suspect. On the other hand what is also a mystery to me, is the speed at which some new stuff is accepted such as television, cinema, cell phones and computers! The co-existence of 1st century technology such as the bullock carts and 21st century technology such as space craft, cell phones and computers can be seen in countries like India and one wonders, how long  we will continue to use the logics, beliefs, technologies of 20 different centuries simultaneously ! Use of computer software to arrive at one's horoscope is a perfect example of the mix of ancient logic and modern technology!

It is better to be a dog in America than a doctor in India

While working in an Indian hospital,  I spent endless happy hours chatting with  doctors from different disciplines in the hospital canteen.  The beauty of these coffee-time chats was that it was not only full of gossip and hospital politics but the gossipers  were people with great wit and biting sarcasm.
One of these was a  middle-aged doctor who, like the rest of us, was poorly paid  but unlike others, he   did not have a private practice to supplement his salary. Once, when his financial and other problems were more worrying than usual, he commented "It is better to be born as a dog in America, than as a doctor in India".  We had all laughed  and joked about it . At that time, none of us had ever been to USA or any country outside India for that matter. (For the record, his comment, sounded so much better in Kannada, with his sarcastic inflections!)

Having moved to  Canada  and having a cat at home,  I am now able to appreciate the truth of his comment ! My cat, unlike us humans,  has no worries. It  spends all it's time doing what it likes. It does not  work, does not worry about paying off mortgage or getting the kids educated and married.  There is someone to fill it's bowls with food and water daily; there's someone to clean it's litter and  when the poop sticks, there are willing slaves to wipe it off  it's backside!  It has four places to choose to sleep ...our bed and the guest bed, a sofa and a chair. It has someone or the other to pet it  and carry it several times a day. It whines and we are immediately at it's beck and call. I take it for walks in the backyard mornings and evenings; if I dont, it mews at me till I yield. I play with this cat  probably more often than some mothers play with their children. We have cut short our trips so that it is not left alone at home. It sleeps the entire day, sprawled on the bed, with it's legs stretched out in all directions. In fact, it was it's sleep posture, which reminded me of the comment of the doctor and the reason for me writing this!  I guess my cat's biggest worry is whether I will take it out to the backyard as soon as I wake or after I had my coffee. I cant imagine, this cat having any other worry on it's mind.

It is a bliss to be born as a pet in a rich country...in a pet lover's home than as a human being in a struggling poor country!

 "The gardener's cat" by Patrick Chalmers  reminds me of my cat.