Hey Reader, 

What's new?

A book is out! If you are a second year student of Economics Honours and EHI is haunting you - here is a relief. A book by 3 students of St. Stephen's College for preparing EHI for your Semesters. 

Price : INR 100/-

Place your order here:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGc4Q25fNG5DVlZEX1BUSmR0eW1XMmc6MQ#gid=0

Here's sneaking some look at the preface, written by the authors!!! Happy reading :)

www.eurekawow.com

PREFACE

If you think the paper ‘Economic History of India’ in the course of the Economics Honors is a monster, something that an innocent economics lover has to grapple with, day in and day out in his sophomore year, and that things could be made much simpler, then you are the person this book has been written for.

We have consolidated, crystallized, summarized and organized the material to be read in a friendly format. The book will provide a heavenly respite from the spiral reading and in some probability act as a perfect substitute to the reading, as far as the examination is concerned.

The authors are third year students (rolling in the annual mode) who went through the ordeal of the paper and felt an empathy deficit in the system when the market would have no worthwhile help books or notes for the students. This is a humble attempt to share our knowledge that we gained over the entire year and the notes that we individually made for our personal reference.

However history lovers are strictly warned against the shallowness of the text. Probably you could search for some extra references on Indian Economic History in the library for strengthening your knowledge and then get back to us for helping write the successive editions of this book.

How to Study? 

1. It is advisable to read the prescribed reading to get a feel of the time period which has been described. 

2. Then check out the corresponding chapter in your EurekaWow help book and go through thoroughly. You will find that the chapter in many places may be a repetition of the original reading but that it very elegantly puts paras and paras of useless babbling in the text in perspective and arranges them in neat paragraphs. 

Since most economics students are not adept at the art of writing long digressive answers, we offer you enough material to remember for writing your final answer in the exam. Since the material is structured, you would be able to have the twin qualities of length and structure in your answer! 

A word of advice - shh…please don’t tell anyone

Logically thinking, that appears true since any sensible individual would get tired of reading sheets after sheets of cursive writing blurting out the same thing. The trick here to score is – product differentiation. Make your answer different from a clichéd one. Write the same material, don’t digress much, but write it in a manner which pleases the eyes of examiners. Leave enough spacing, margins at the corners, give a lot of sub headings, try making little flow charts here and there just to put your point across and be sure to extract a decent score for each answer 

P.S. Any opinions expressed are those of the authors. All errors are our own. 

Sincerely, 

GP, JK, DB

Of life, onions and novels

Now I know why people write novels. That’s because little stories are unfolding around us practically all the times. The past few months have been quite a revelation for me. Characters, natures, dispositions somehow came to the forefront and I discovered how every being around had his/her own way of dealing with things. Of course, that is not something new. The fact about the diversity of human natures has always been known.

Probably it’s a part of growing up. Monali – my roommate, has been my tutor in this regard during the last year – I have to some extent learnt over this year how one should read between lines, see beyond the surface and learn to look at the real intentions of people around. Not all that is said in this world is true and not all that is promised is necessarily kept. In the end, probably simpletons can find it very tough. You have to be vigilant and diplomatic lest you are duped. In fact, the name of this blog was inspired from that very thought long time back – the fact that all of us are nothing but human onions but probably for a while I found exceptions to the quote and sidelined it. But now I am convinced.

Right now, I feel as if I am living in the world of a novelist. Umpteen little stories are unfolding around, not without a reason. Things I couldn’t have dreamt about are transpiring and there are another umpteen stories which are making sense to me now, stories that unfolded way back. Probably that’s why people write novels. Actually what they are actually writing is nothing but an autobiography but just wrapping and packaging it as fictionalized accounts. Those little real stories which transpire are just tinkered a bit, bits and pieces of fiction are then injected and then the novelist simply threads them all into one big account in a single volume. Isn’t it strange, the novelist then signs the novel as ‘his’ creation, whereas his creation is nothing but a replica or a microcosm of the Real creation.

Some time back, I stopped reading fiction because I actually felt that I had outgrown it. It irritated me when the novel would come to an end and I would jump back into reality suddenly. I would get the same feeling in a movie hall at the end of three hours. The immersion into the reel world would abruptly come to an end and leave me dejected. Every time it was like receiving a hard blow on the face in the end – after all, all that was mere fiction – a lie.

My views have changed a bit now. There are elements of truth in that big lie. Even the lie is not unadulterated!  And probably that’s why I have decided I’m gonna write short stories, touching ones. The soul of the stories would be the same as I witnessed in the real world but the names of characters and places would be fabricated. This is because my characters would then be living persons and so that my perceptions would not in any way cause any harm to them. But the lesson would be intact. And I’m surely going to share those stories, in the near future some time. 

On Attaining Equilibrium

I found something! Amazingly beautiful. Probably you already discovered it long time back, but my moment of discovery came just now and I have been ecstatic since ….hmm, not ecstatic exactly because that would contradict the essence of my discovery…but certainly elated.

I have seen two of my professors remaining at an unusual calm with themselves and yeah, they spread it around – that slowness in their voice, that peace in their words, that stability in their lectures. I find it contagious – I find myself unconsciously revising their notes at the same pace as they were taught by them in the classroom.

It struck me one day while writing my diary, that the word ‘sehaj’ in my language could describe it all – that stability and stillness. But an all capturing English word for that – I groped for the right word.

It had the same meanings as ‘thehraao’ – you would have noticed distinguished classical music singers – when they would take the alaap at a fast pace, although it would be a flurry of notes, but each one of the sur would come with clarity and with a certain stability in itself.

And then, I am reminded of the example that my dad always gives me when my mood is upset and I would nudge him by his side. ‘You see that toy – ‘Hit Me’, you hit it and it rocks from one side to the other. The harder you hit, the longer it rocks and then after a while the oscillations become smaller and smaller until it comes to rest again. So are we human beings, little ‘HitMe’s. Trials and tribulations of life hit us and then we rock from side to side, sometimes for days and weeks and months until we finally discover our core and come to rest.’

The other day while reading Sukhmani Sahib from an English translation – I found the word. Guess what?

Equilibrium.

The word would be so common and close to my life – I had not expected.

The discovery has given me a new perspective of all the equilibria I study in my course. The fact that someone could be at an equilibrium with oneself is just so captive for me.

I have seen myself going through periods of volatile moods and emotions – just ecstatic one moment and inexplicably sad, the other. At the end of the day, I find it a zero-sum game as if the sadness simply eclipsed and canceled the happiness of the morning. What is the use, I ask – of such ephemeral joys and sorrows?

So I took a decision – I vowed to myself. As far as possible, I am going to maintain an equilibrium with myself. Basking in joy should not make me forget the transitoriness of it, right? Similarly for difficult moments.

I have been doing 'Sehaj Paath' since school time and now I have realized the real meaning of it. Attaining sehaj that is, equilibrium.

I have a nice time now, doing the 'Equilibrium Paath' every night before going to bed and true, it stabilizes me!

Of prose and poetry

Hello Reader

You might have noticed a sudden rush of poetry on this serious prose-ey blog here. I have to admit that I have been influenced by somebody lately and the poems that you see are the output of that influence.

I have figured out that there is something exceptionally beautiful about poetry - it is something that lends it a certain kind of creative 'freedom' - freedom to embed every word with a plethora of feelings - dense, intense feelings, and yeah it is much more malleable unlike prose. It can be open to as many interpretations as there are readers and every single interpretation has a strange quality of making it personalised.

Some moments, some feelings get so beautifully frozen in time and space through a poem. And I see an element of cryptography there - because at the end of it you could get to the person who you are writing it for without making it completely transparent too - while others get a different personalised flavor out of it :P - you get what I mean, right?

Do check out my senior Rasagya's blog that is the fount of inspiration for my poetry, - here's it www.rasagya.blogspot.com

Happy reading!!!

Catharsis

I love the way you do it
That annoyance, that toughness
Which take the smile off my face


And catapult me into
Another world
Of silence, emotions and distances
Of dampened joys
Of ghazals and sad songs
Which ignite a different me
And inspire poetry
And voyages into self
Away from all power and pelf
And detachment above all


I'm so glad about this barrier
That keeps you from understanding my poetry
For if you did
Your eyes would go moist over it
And then I wouldn't have liked to see
The catharsis that would have followed

Of Hands - Visible and Invisible

The drooped flower had blossomed again - and I had gone and kissed her goodbye and asked her a favor.

'My letter which was signed by the dean is with Khurshid didi who is apparently out and I need to get a photocopy of it and give it to the mess' --- could you do that for me please?' I had asked with a bit of hesitation.

She smiled reassuringly and said aloud 'Sure!'

'Thanks...'

' - now that's what I don't like --- why do you have to say thanks for little things...???'

'...I guess I don't like asking favours - it makes me feel dependent - I have always been independent'

'...hmm' she moves her eyes in a reflective manner and enunciates, 'Markets cannot always work independently - they also need intervention.'

It reminds me of a supply- demand cross diagram and market failure that occurs when efficiency and equity see a tradeoff.

'Yeah, that's correct...you are my Government', I quip.

With that beautiful realisation, we part.    ***

NANDINI’S LITTLE TALES

‘You know, that teacher at my school?’

…Which one? I ask.

‘The one who takes her hair like this from the side and then puts a ‘chimta’ at the back…’, she tells me with a lively movement of her hands describing the hairstyle of her teacher. ‘I don’t know how she does it though’, she continues. She looks up from the drawing sheet she is coloring to find my face unsatiated by her detail.

She continues with her description of the lady who teaches her everyday in the classroom, trying hard to remember her name which I happen to enquire. Nevertheless she is determined to make me form a mental picture of her teacher’s appearance in my head. ‘She puts ‘lalli’ (lipstick) on her lips before going back home in the afternoon and then some person comes to pick her up in a car’.

…Oh! Waah,  I smile at her with an exclamation as she gets busy coloring the house she had drawn with the pencil. A damp smell of mustard oil spreads in the room. Her grandmother must have lovingly oiled her hair in the morning before sending her to school.

‘Paper acche se karke aana – fir hum bahut si parhaaeee karenge aur bahut khelenge’, I hear myself telling the little girl building castles in the air before her, of days ahead full of fun.

Every time I come home, these little kids are excited and they blush and do all sorts of movements to express their love. I know they miss me. I miss them a lot. And then we have a nice little fun class in the park. These classes come to end very soon, as I leave for Delhi everytime, to jump into another world – a fast paced world with lots of deadlines, a place choked with competition and ambition.

At last, I always smile back at myself for short-lived moments like these, at least I could treasure them for a lifetime and see the fruits of a little effort done two years back maturing every time I come back. Nandini is enrolled in an English medium school nearby. Her mother and grandmother work as maids in the colony and her dad is a painter – the one who paints real houses. It had taken persistent and pressing effort to convince her parents about sending her to school. The ladies in the colony had contributed a share in her school fees. Unlike kids of other migrant laborers, her parents have not yet migrated from this place from two years. Settlement has somehow ensured the continuity of her education.