Rusticating Part I

      As I mentioned earlier, my desire to decipher the experience on vacation to Madurai made to write this post. Since I am from a domestic project, I was fortunate enough to get a long vacation of two weeks. As I landed, I felt the conducive vicinity around me in forms of  language spoken and people’s faces which I am missing for the last couple of years. Simply you could describe it as the summit of nostalgia. Life in Mumbai gave me the opportunity to witness the mammoth infrastructure in terms of roads, apartments, railways, water supply etc. I wondered "We were staying in such a small city !!" as I headed toward my home at Annanagar. Roads were pretty narrow with negligible traffic, which obviates the need for its wideness. From the station, I travelled to home by the so called "City bus", which I would never like to miss whenever I go to my home town. Mumbai-life at the back of my mind and Madurai-life in front of my eyes drag my mind to a comparison between the city I love and the city I live now.

     Though detailed plan of rustication had not been made, I had a rough to-do list like meeting friends; discussing with professors ; meeting relatives and of course to eat the delicious meal prepared by mom at home.

     Metro-cities like Mumbai have strong affinity towards the western life, where things like  personal life, opinion & desire, financial security, job satisfaction are having ultra high priority. For getting these, people are ready to compromise anything and they rationalize their act in the name of “growth”. Recently I read, in In Spite of Gods , that only the society, which urbanize rapidly will be able to grow constantly by providing jobs to all common people. But the recent economic melt down defy this. Even a small crisis on any one of the industry or business sector in the global village creates its amplified repercussion on all possible business and industry there by affecting all class of people. Though we cannot deny the fact that urbanization fueled to exponential growth, equally we should accept that urbanization has increased the vulnerability of our economy for external factors( i.e a business carried out across the boundaries). I am going off the topic.. right?. So the point is, urbanization is good  for an extent, but madly following the same  would jeopardize our financial stability at times of economic crisis like “Credit Crunch”. Personally I feel, we need to encourage more variety of industry or business as we have to achieve heterogeneity in our business. Amuck westernization would be a barrier for creating a heterogeneity in our business.

      After spending couple of days in home I had visited our college for meeting the professors. I was able to visualize some changes in the college, which was on its way to lose the reputation it had. The “university issue” had already segregated the stake holders of the college into group of islands. I felt a sense of insecurity prevailing among the college staffs when I had interacted with them. Our college needs better infrastructure, high profile professors, better course work and all these could be possibly achieved through funds. Perhaps this could be the  reason why the agenda of “ The university creation” has been put forth by the management. But you know, there are always two sides for a coin. As an alumni I want a fair decision to be taken by considering all the possible inputs and analyzing all possible pros and cons.

      As a part of the vacation I had travelled towns, villages and cities to meet uncles, aunts cousin brothers, cousin sisters, nephews etc. Really nice to be a part of a big family, huh ! I had wonderful time meeting  school and college friends especially Vignesh, Reuben, Sathya and Arun (Muthu and Pras were missing). I still remember those penultimate days of our semester exams, when we (me Pras and Reuben) mock at each other in the name of “Preparing for exams”. Amid the vacation, a new fragrance of thoughts on society, culture, economy and politics blossom in my mind. It was quite peculiar compared to thought history dominated by electronics and computers. With all these memories  I was getting ready to catch the train towards Mumbai.