Doctors vs Engineers

Indian parents see these two are the only two professions they want their children in. I thought it would be fun to compare these two as well.
So what are the differences - for doctors the duration of the course is much larger, but then again you hardly find any qualified doctor come unemployed slowdown or recession or whatever. For doctors the effort during the course is much more intense than in engineering colleges. Doctors get more respect in the society than engineers - they apparently are in a noble profession and they save lives.  Lets face it - there are too many engineers around, being a computer engineer is the most ridiculous cliché for an Indian now.
So why is this so and why is it that there are still more people rushing to engineering colleges than to a medical school ? Well firstly, the seats are much less - so getting into a reasonable medical school is a herculean task. Also the investment needed in terms of money, time and effort may be much more. Another thing is that the students who simply do not have much brains can somehow survive engineering but surviving medical school without a brain sounds much more improbable. So the reason for this is obvious - engineers baring a select few working on the most critical projects are not working on something as critical as a person's life. So they can afford to have relatively incompetent people in the team but incompetent doctors are much more risky.
About the pay I guess its the whole demand and supply thing - what doctors do has been made into a obscure knowledge and common people are not supposed to treat themselves or others. While in case of engineering everyone will give it a shot, we have mechanical and chemical engineers getting into software development and we have commerce graduates as well. Soon enough we will have secondary school drop outs trying their hand at it perhaps !! Another thing is the work hours. The dearth of qualified doctors makes it necessary to overwork the few ones around. While engineers would do a 50 hour week 70 for a doctor is not very rare. So obviously they need to be compensated for their longer hours.
The thing is more about what you are good at, I think money, social standing, personal life, peace of mind or stability are important and as long as you take care of them in some moderation you should go for one more thing without which everything else don't add up to much - it is whether you love it. If you love it and are good at something then only can you respect yourself and without which the rest don't mean much at all.

Congress and India

I have tried largely to keep this forum a pace for intellectual debate and avoided politics, but more importantly it is a forum for things I feel strongly about, so I will deviate from this practice this one time. In fact, I started with writing a status on my Facebook page and decided this warranted a more laborious effort.

I have never been a big fan of 'Mahatma' Gandhi and similarly, by consequence of that choice, of the Congress. I, like a large number of Indians, have a feeling of resentment for the fact that Gandhi made us come out as a nation of ultra pacifists to the point of looking more like beggars with his brand of Satyagraha politics. I do feel that leaders like Sardar Patel, Subhash Chandra Bose should have had a bigger say in shaping the future of  India. From how the events unfolded, and the way that Gandhi-Nehru family has dominated the political scene for most of the time, it feels that India has been under the rule of a clan and makes one wonder how much better it is for us to be under their rule instead of our erstwhile colonial masters.

The only alternative I have seen (other than Janata Dal in the late 70s and 80s) is BJP. Hailing from Bengal, I find Left, with their focus on arresting any possible development, a despicable set of people. The BJP was obviously seen as a ray of new hope by Indians and hence given the vote during 1998-2004 under the leadership of Atal Bihari Vajpayee (ABV). As I look at it, India is a country with tremendous potential which was born some 60 odd years back. The problem was that being immature, having never governed a country before, the leaders did make some obvious mistakes and obviously have had members who are corrupt. Sadly, a political establishment with no corruption is not a realistic dream and a leader giving us that remains something to be seen only in Bollywood movies. The problem is not that Indians are more corruptible and so we end up having the more corrupt leaders, it is the simple fact that man at his worst is an asshole and he tends to take advantage of very opportunity to do any evil he can get away with. The problem is that somehow this mechanism to prosecute such worst of men has been a total failure. More realistically, I think having an establishment in which the major leaders are not corrupt and do not allow their juniors open ground for corruption and punishment for those stupid/unlucky enough to be caught is a fairly reasonable demand. With the way voting goes on and the multi-party system - coalition politics come into play and to a cynical mind it kind of legalizes presence of some corruption. Given that, I have seen that there were scandals a plenty during the BJP or rather NDA (the BJP led coalition) rule but these do not compare to the ones we have seen in the recent years with the Congress led UPA coalition. Also, interesting point to note is that the strong mandate Congress received made them less feeble to the whims of their partners. Still, we have seen the Hon. MMS looking the other way as the country is being plundered. I do believe that if it was only some junior minister from a coalition partner, things would have been different. I would not say that MMS benefited from the scams but then again he is more of a front to the matriarch of the Gandhi family.

Mythological Analogies

The more traditional and religious among us deeply believe in mythological tales literally. This, to the educated mind, is a rather difficult thing to do. As we see yes or no as the only two options, we tend to choose not to believe in our history, the way it is told. I seek to find a third way, a way made of reasoning and not merely trying to make choices.

I agree, in the way things are shown - arrows multiplying to 20 times, people flying etc., they are  not believable. Brushing aside everything is a mistake I would not do either - for what reason is there for people to write these epic tales in jest. They say that  truth is stranger than fiction and these tales are so complex and full of strange occurrences that it would seem more probable that they are the renditions of actual happenings rather than figments of someone's imagination. And there are too many half evidences to support these tales for them to be not true.

The thing most people don't realize is that there is a third answer, a more realistic and sensible interpretation of all these tales. For example there is mention of things like Brahma Astra, the description of which fits the modern day atomic bombs. In fact the descriptions mention of widespread environmental damage, infertility among people,  land being rendered barren etc. It seems more destructive than the atom bombs modern science has given to us yet. Most probably this refers to a fusion based atomic bomb. Similarly the relatively less powerful Indra Astra seems more to match in description to the modern day atom bomb. The description of ultimate warriors, archers hitting an arrow that multiplies manifold would perhaps be more likely be something like a automatic firing weapon possibly similar to ones we have today. Reference to warriors chanting divine words to summon these weapons is something similar to voice activation or perhaps even remote controlled delivery of missiles. When they speak of a Guru giving his favorite pupil these weapons, it smacks of a similarity to modern day nuclear proliferation. When the tales speak of immaculate conception with the sage giving the princess his fruit, it probably is just an attempt at censorship gone real bad.

The tales are enormous and the impossibilities described in them are countless as well, there is hardly any reason to justify such an enormous effort. It is suffice to say that there are many that we can find analogies to modern achievements, for the rest perhaps modern science has still a long way to go. It is easy to accept things blindly, easier still to reject them as unbelievable but hardest to uncover the true meaning of things.
I see it more as a case of the meaning of words being lost over the years.

Selfless

However much we may want to deny it, but fact remains that man is mostly a selfish creature and human relationships under all the sugar coating and emotional melodrama, are made of selfish intentions primarily. We may say that we love/care about our friends and family, but is it not for some gain or the other always! I won't go into how each of these relationships are for gain - we all know other than the rare exceptions there are sufficient reasons for our love. I tend to not take into account relationships we are born into - i.e. our family. I think trying to evaluate them is somewhat unfair and unrealistic. That being said, I am not saying that each of us has a sinister side that schemes and plots behind relationships on how to exploit them for gains. It is something that we do sub-consciously and often do not realize. So, basically, man is not structured to be selfless towards other people.

Life is the most complex thing there can be and as in all things relating to life in general, there is an exception - a 'but'. There are relationships from which we do not expect anything and in fact after a while we just want to give our everything to it. There are not many people who can claim to having such a relationship - and a person with even one such relationship should consider himself to be very lucky. The feeling you get from a selfless relationship is happiness that doesn't need anything to go your way or for you to gain in any way. You are happy just because the person exists and that there is a bond between you. It doesn't even need the person on the other end to reciprocate. Funnily enough, as mushy as this sounds - it doesn't have to be love. It can also be a platonic friendship too !!

This piece, unlike all my other pieces, doesn't seek to arrive at a solution for a problem or to convey my ideals  or philosophy. It is more of a celebration and acknowledgment of my good fortune on having such a relationship :)