Swaroop Paha

Hi guys! Trust you all are doing good!

It's been a long time I have been away from personal blogging. However some recent instances moved my thought process and I felt like going back to sharing things again.

Coming to the topic, now you must be wondering what does it mean. Its a popular Marathi quote from the legendary Acharya Vinoba Bhave "Swaroop paha, Vishwaroop pahu naka". It means "Look at yourself, not the world". Nowadays its really necessary that we understand the meaning of this quote in our life. I think we need to interpret the quote itself as "First try to change yourself, then go for changing the world". 

I am sure that all my fellow Indians are quite happy in their personal lives, because thats what we learn, earn and do hardwork for right? So what's going wrong with our public life? Why are we becoming more antisocial day by day? Is it really because of facilities, benifits, govertments, earnings? Yes they all do matter, however What's most important to live cool, peaceful life is to bring discipline in your own life first.

Well, first let's not compare India and other countries in world when it comes to the public facilities. We have an habbit of blaming everything on the system to resist from behaving ourselves. Every nation has got its own set of problems of population and resulting burden on public facilities. Governments will do their bit, but are we doing our bit to help, that's the question.

To start with, let's try and review our public behavioral pattern to understand it. 

What better example than our road sense? I have seen many instances where the way we Indians behave ourselves really changes when we move around the world. For an instance when an IDEAL, PEACE loving Indian drives a vehicle in foreign countries he stops his vehicle well behind the zebra crossing line when signal is red or someone is crossing the road. The very same person when driving back in India, recklessly stops over the zebra crossings or sometimes jump the signal, dashes or runs over people crossing the road. Now same IDEAL, PEACE loving Indian on other side of situation. In foreign countries he waits at the signal for walking green light to cross over. Here in India he doesnt bother to look at the walking signal, because what matters is looking at the vehicles. Less number of vehicles means you can cross signal anytime. People hold hand in hand and recklessly run across zebra crossing even though vehicles are plying at killing high speed. Look at the way we switch lanes in our country in a bid to overtake someone, sometimes cornering the vehicle. So what? Quite good for an adventure right. We all love adventure. 

Come back to Mumbai's lifeline our very own Local train. Stations are getting more crowded day by day. Getting in and getting down the train, travelling to and fro is becoming worst nightmare. This because everyone wants to get in or get out first. In India we always want to be top of other. Afterall thats how we have been tought  at the school "life is race! if you dont run fast, you will be broken unda". We always want to be ahead at the cost of our own life. One recent instance of such attitude was Elphistone railway bridge incident. System was really not capable but what mattered the most is our attitude. The guy who spread the rumour, people who belived it all led to the fatal accident that claimed 23 lives. Entire blame was shifted to the system. While rushing for work and in a bid to get ahead of others, precious lives were crushed and i am sure people running ahead might have happily reached office ignoring everything else. Is our self esteem and bid to do better than others is worth these risks?

Now the big question is how to address this mess. I think its our job to do our bit for nations duty. The only way we can achieve that is by bringing the discipline in our life. Before blaming anyone for anything wrong we should question ourselves as to what we would have done in that situation. "Swaroop Paha", short and sweet thing to remember here. When you introspect, I am sure many of you will find that everyday you might even be making the very same mistakes you blame others for. Understanding and addressing that is where the difference comes in. We should try and resist ourselves at the cost of anything. Afterall nothing is as precious as life. Getting late for office, start early. Getting late to home, relax take your time as sometime or other you will reach. We dont need to be in rush always. We can achieve all the good things in life without rushing too. When we step out of our home for anything, we should do everything as we do at home considering that the Nation is our home too. Be patient, be cool, be happy, respect others and live fantastic joyous life. 

Why not do a small assignment? Let's spend 5 minutes of our life to introspect our social life. I am sure everyone will find some things that might be worth changing without any major adjustments. Afterall this will help us give self satisfaction and also sense of doing our responsibility for improvement of the system.

The change is not easy and quick, but we can certainly start with small things. 

Be cool, enjoy life!

Jai hind!

SJ