My turbulent teenage years

Teenage years are not easy, even though they are one of the best and most interesting phases of our lives, the journey through these years can be rocky and bumpy. Those were turbulent times for me and the lack of access to information did not make it easy. People of my generation love to roast today's generation about internet addiction and social media dependence, but they fail to recognize that there is a huge positive side to this connectivity, it allows one to access useful information. I could not access the information that I needed as there were no resources available for me. Concepts like personal choice, passion, feminism, equality, justice, and privacy were neither part of my vocabulary nor did anyone around me care about these things. Also, I grew up in a sexually suppressed society, even a benign kiss or a hug on the screen was taboo. The interaction with the opposite sex was neither encouraged nor easily possible. Even in my college days, my interaction with girls was very awkward and I tried to avoid it as much as I could, not because I didn't want to interact, I just didn't know how to interact. I was confused from the inside but acted confident from the outside. Turbulent from the inside, but calm from the outside. Angry but did not know why and on whom. With many questions but with no way to find any answers.

As a teenager, I was also very confused about things happening around me. I did not understand why we struggled for money even after my parents really worked hard and did not have any conventional bad habits like drinking or gambling. I struggled to understand why females were treated differently than males. I and my brothers were expected to do good in school, but there was no such expectation from any of my sisters. It is not that these things started happening around me when I entered my teenage. They have been happening around me since I was born, but I started getting affected by them only during my teenage. As a male, I was conditioned to think and behave in a certain way, even in the poor neighborhood, I had many privileges just because of my gender. Females were looked at and treated in a certain way, almost like some object. There were strict boundaries for them that they were not supposed to cross, and if they crossed, there were serious consequences. Even their own families did not spare them if they dared to cross those boundaries. 

Education for me was only a key to coming out of poverty, nothing more than that. I was desperate to get out of poverty and education was the only option available to me. I did not go to school and college because I loved it or enjoyed it, but because I had to as it was my ticket to the outside world. The world that I saw around me but didn't belong to. I desperately wanted to be rich, rich enough so that I didn't have to think about how to get things that I needed. During my high school and college days, I started reading books outside my study books. Reading was not my hobby of choice, but it just happened that it was the only option available once my other friends went their own ways pursuing different options that economically underprivileged neighborhoods offered. It was sad to part ways, but it was also unavoidable. As I did not have much to do, I started reading newspapers beyond sports and film portions, and from there I got introduced to politics, religion, and other subjects. I wanted to know more and this is how I started borrowing books from libraries around me. This is when my life changed. 

My family thinks that I am a feminist or have liberal social values because I came to America, but this is not true. I was like this even when I was living in Pune but I did not talk about it much. I also never used to stay much at home and at home, I never used to talk much. For example, my daughter is named Sara, which is not a name considered for a girl in Hindu families, not because I visited America or knew anything about America, but because I wanted her to understand that people may judge you just based on your name and she should not the one doing this. It was this simple, I was not looking for anything else. I learned this from the book I read about Dr. Shriram Lagoo, a famous Marathi, and Hindi movie/stage actor. I read so many books that I don't even remember their names or authors. I just remember what I read not who wrote it or where I read it. I just read whatever came into my hands, even at the cost of my academic performance. The education system in which I studied never encouraged any outside reading, rather it was considered a waste of time. I am sure my academic performance would have been much better if I had not listened to Hindi movie songs or read as much as I did. I might have become an engineer, a doctor, or even a government officer that my parents desperately wanted me to become, but definitely would not have learned about feminism, casteism, gender discrimination, communalism, socialism, communism, capitalism, hate politics, secularism, and many other things. I do not regret wasting my time in reading at all, it provided some answers to the questions that I had but did not who to ask. Books saved me from being a narrow-minded, patriarchal, casteist, communal male, they made me a better person than I was. All the books I read and the Hindi film music made my teenage years less bumpy and turbulent than they could have been. It also saved me from various addictions that were common in my neighborhood. I was so addicted to reading books, watching movies, and buying audio cassettes that I had no money left for cigarettes, alcohol, or gutkha (a chewing tobacco product that was a craze during my college days).  

I hope at least some of the readers will relate to my teenage years. These years are years of internal and external changes. Along with our body and hormone levels, our understanding of our surroundings also evolves. It is good to find some channel or mechanism to cope with this change. I found that channel in movies, music, and books. Some may find it in performing arts or sports. Some may find it in writing or cooking. Find that channel that will make your ride less bumpy and turbulent. It will be still shaky, but not as much to knock you off the road or throw you off the cliff. You will be fine, just find the channel that works for you. These are our formative years, if my experience helps you to find some solace and guidance, I am happy. 

Thank you for reading and please share your views on this topic. 

Vinay can be reached at thevinay2022@gmail.com

Romanticizing poverty

"Poor people are happier," "There is more empathy and compassion among the poor compared to the rich," or "Money can't buy happiness." There are many such statements that either romanticize poverty or vilify wealth. I feel both, either romanticizing poverty or vilifying wealth, are gross generalizations. People who romanticize poverty or try to paint its rosy picture normally have never been poor in their life, or if they were, they are no more living in poverty. Most who tell rosy stories about the benefits of being poor definitely won't leave their comfortable life and live among the poor if given a choice. Of course, there will be some exceptions, but this is my general observation. It is true that money can't buy you happiness but it can give you access to resources and that's the whole purpose of having money and poverty robs your access to these resources.

I can tell from my personal experience that being poor is no fun, and no one stays poor by choice. Also, there is a difference between living a simple life and being poor. Living a simple life is a matter of choice, a simple person chooses not to use or exploit the resources that we have, but in poverty, there is no such choice, as there is no access to resources in the first place. Poverty not only affects your economic state, but it also affects your social and mental state. Many times it dictates your choices and makes you feel helpless, targeted, and angry. These feelings of helplessness and anger can manifest in many different ways. Poverty affects our personal choices, and it limits our personal and professional growth. At the same time, poverty teaches you how to deal with a lack of resources. How to live with limited access to critical resources like food, education, healthcare, shelter, and some basic enjoyment like watching movies and stuff like that. Poverty affects the entire family, kids get affected differently compared to adults and there are different effects on genders depending on the culture and society where we live. This does not mean that people living in poverty never ever feel moments of happiness. As kids, we had our moments of joy, but to generalize or paint them as a life of fun and exuberance would be a gross and unjust exaggeration. Among those rare and precious moments of joy, there are moments of extreme pain and helplessness. It is no fun to watch someone being addicted. There is no fun to watch daily physical, verbal, and sexual abuse. There is no fun to watch people dying due to a lack of decent healthcare. There is no fun to watch kids drop out of school to support their families. There is no fun to watch kids getting entangled in vicious circles of crime and addiction. And it is no fun to know that this vicious cycle will keep on repeating unless we as a society can take conscious and deliberate steps to intervene. 

Some think that poor people are poor because of their faults, laziness, or lack of effort. This is a very ignorant and superficial view. As I already mentioned, no one remains poor by choice, most living in poverty try really hard, to the best of their capabilities to come out of it, but their path is riddled with many hurdles that are difficult to understand for anyone who has not lived or experienced poverty. Looking from the outside, it's easy to find faults or provide some unpractical or ignorant solutions. One simple example is related to education. There is data that shows there is a gap between the academic performances of students coming from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Students coming from well-to-do families perform better compared to students coming from underprivileged families. Based on this if someone concludes that students from well-to-do families are more intelligent or more hard-working compared to students coming from underprivileged families, it will not only be wrong but also a socially devastating conclusion. Accessibility to resources is a huge factor in this. Factors like having enough space at home to study, enough quality food to eat, access to books, access to mentors, access to pay time or free time (yes, kids need that, they are not machines to study day and night), and a supportive peer group, they all contribute to the success of any student. As long as we don't understand the impact of each and every factor on the socio-economic development of underprivileged families we are neither going to understand their problems nor going to offer any viable solution. 

In many societies, poverty has a direct correlation with race or caste. This is the result of years of suppression and discrimination. This cannot be denied, historical facts and data both support this. People to refuse to accept this are either living in denial or are ignorant or are racist or casteist. This is not a perfect correlation, it's not a mathematical formula, but it is very clear. Therefore, equity and equality both matter equally. Our social and educational programs need to focus on equity as much as they focus on equality. There is no harm or shame in recognizing our privileges and acting accordingly. Being privileged is not wrong or anything to be ashamed of, but not recognizing it and behaving as if others who don't have access to the same resources should compete with us on the same level only shows our ignorance and lack of social sensitivity. Let's be more sensitive and compassionate towards each other. Let's try to understand each other's struggles, acknowledge the difficulties we all face, and try to help each other. Let's try not to look at everything from a political or religious angle. Let's try to be more compassionate humans.

Thank you for reading and please share your views about this topic.

Money can buy happiness

"Money can't buy happiness," we often hear this tagline repeated during many conversations, seminars, lectures, or motivational talks and the funny thing is that most people who offer this advice are rich and charge money to give those lectures. It is very easy to say that money can't solve all the problems or money can't buy happiness, but does lack of money solve all the problems or bring any happiness? Happiness is a state of mind that depends on so many factors and it differs from person to person. Every person defines happiness in their own way, unnecessarily people try to standardize the definition of happiness like we try to standardize beauty, success, and many other personal things, and such statements are the result of this standardization process. There was a time in my life when I used to think that money could solve all the problems, this was because of our financial and social situation at that time. During that phase of my life, the reason for most of our problems and troubles was lack of money. We continuously felt a shortage of money almost for everything starting from education, home, and travel, every issue used to end with having or not having money. I still think that money can solve many problems, it is better to have money than not to have it. But it is also true that money cannot solve all problems, and this is true for any other tool, there is not a single solution for all problems faced by any individual. Also, the desire to have or not to have money is entirely personal, some people are okay with not having material possessions and for them, money doesn't hold much significance, but for some money might be important, it is an entirely personal matter.

Actually, the statement "money can't buy happiness" is a result of money-oriented culture. In a consumerist society, we need money to buy almost everything. It is the ultimate currency that works everywhere, people may or may not believe in religion, god, science, government, or media but almost everyone believes in money. Because of the universal acceptance of money as a symbol of power and status, its possession is directly linked to happiness. People equate the amount of money with the amount of happiness. However, this is not the correct assumption, the amount of money is not proportional to the amount of happiness. Happiness is a personal feeling, and it depends on so many things and money is just one of them. Everyone has different needs and desires but in today's world because of aggressive marketing and brainwashing there is a very narrow definition of happiness, and everyone tries to fit into that definition. The ultimate aim for most people in society is to earn enough money to buy as many things as possible, thinking it will bring happiness in their lives. This desire to earn "enough" money then becomes the sole purpose of their life, and that "enough" is never achieved because as time passes the desires keep on changing and the definition of "enough money" also keeps on changing. This continuous chase creates many problems in a person's life, issues like stress, anxiety, frustrations, lack of free time, and health-related issues crop up, even relationships start getting affected and ultimately the happiness for which this quest was started remains a distant goal. At this junction, "money can't buy happiness" starts making sense, but it is not the fault of money that it can't buy happiness, it is the fault of that person that they forgot what happiness meant for them. There is nothing wrong with having the desire to make more money, this desire can result in a very successful and productive professional life, which in turn can generate a lot of happiness. Money does have the capacity to solve many problems, it can help people to achieve their dreams but only if those dreams were their own dreams, not some borrowed dreams. The presence or absence of money can cause a lot of issues, so one needs to strike the balance as per one's own needs and requirements. Many people struggle because of their inability to strike this balance.

Money holds certain status and power in today's world, and no one can deny this. Its proper use can result in a lot of happiness and comfort in anyone's life. But this needs a lot of clarity and proper planning. I believe that money can buy happiness and I am saying this based on my personal experience. How much money one needs to be happy differs from person to person, there is no standard chart to correlate money and happiness. I know that money can't solve all the problems but nothing else can do it, so, there is no use in blaming money for this. It all depends on how we use money, after all, money is like any other tool or weapon, and the results of its use depend on how we use it. Like any other tool and weapon, please remember that money can hurt us and others around us if not used properly. So, use money wisely, be prosperous, help others, and be happy.

Thanks for reading and please share your views on this topic.

[Copyright: Vinay Thakur. Please contact the author for re-posting or publishing]