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Oct 19, '08

The Great Indian Middle Class Cover up

A few months back I took a train to Kerala and saw a large number of “VIP” suitcases “covered” with olive green canvas … and thereby hangs a rat’s tale.

I guess I must have been in the 5th Std when some returning-from- “phoren” relative gifted our family a transistor radio.. and not just any radio..it was National Panasonic !! cutting edge Japanese technology of the time. As an aside, these were always called transistors.. never transistor radios.

The new transistor was a big change from the older (Philips) radio which would needed a warm-up before use , made guttural noises and sometimes whistled funnily for no reason. An additional plus point was that I (or my brother) could carry it to our room and listen to all the Vividh Bharati broadcasts of film songs..including the famous Jayamala, a program where AIR broadcast songs requested by soldiers from the armed forces.I am greatly indebted to the Lance Naiks, Sipahis and Subedars from 56 APO and Ambala cant for this early exposure to one of our great musical traditions. Come evening, the transistor would be appropriated by my father for the nine o’clock news (of Devaki Nandan Pandey and Lotika Ratnam fame). But I digress…

This transistor was about the size of a large dictionary and had shiny and smart looking knobs and dials. It had a built in antenna (aerial in those days) which could be folded . But it did not come with a factory made case. So in deference to the time worn tradition of our dusty land, a “rexine” cover was procured. It was black with a transparent plastic window. So the smart Japanese thing was now looking like a piece of Russian artillery. Thankfully the music was still as sweet. Somehow the aesthete in me did not take too kindly to this Russian intrusion, and at every available opportunity I would take the cover off to admire the Japanese beauty that lay beneath.

That was my first first-hand brush with this obsession of middle-class India to “cover” anything and everything in sight. Suitcases, televisions, washing machines, music systems, mobile phones, computers, telephone instruments, et al, ad infinitum. My mother cannot refrain from a disapproving glance if she sees something that does not have a cover. And so it has gone on. Products designed with passion and commitment by left-brain thinking Italian designers, long haired Japanese award winning designers and similar assorted persons with artistic souls are promptly “covered” by us In India. To add insult to designer injury, the covers are about as appealing as a badly made caramel custard. And then finally of course there are the people who will buy perfectly designed and expensive Japanese and German cars and never bother to remove for months the flimsy polythene film that covers the seats.

Rather tasteless, no ?

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Sep 09, '08

No Green cards for India

Can you guess the number of Nepali citizens that live in India ? Well according to a reliable figure available from 1997 it was 1 million. The estimates for today vary from 2 to 3 million. That’s 20 lacs minimum… not a small number. While in the earlier years , they were mainly concentrated in the north , nowadays one can see them in the south too. According to a treaty between India and Nepal, citizens of either country do not require a passport/ visa to enter the other country. Almost all Nepalis in India do low level jobs such as watchmen and construction labour and domestics, and certainly don’t have a very high standard of living. But their numbers still keep increasing because conditions back home in Nepal are even worse. In many ways this parallels the migration of Indians from rural areas to cities and from poorer states (like UP and Bihar) to Mumbai.

So while educated Indian youth travel westwards for a better life, Nepalis come to India. Nothing wrong with either set, because the quest of a better life is undeniable. But look at the paradox. The Western/ developed nations (USA, Canada, Australia, Europe) with their very high income levels (USA per capita GDP is US 50,000/- compared to USD 2,700/- for India) have all kind of rules and regulations and restrictions to discourage immigrants. They, the West, only accept the best, most well qualified Indians and make it look like a favour. And while India does not have much wealth to share, for many years we have been sharing our poverty (not my words.. I think this is from Amartya Sen). Does it mean India has a heart ? A heart that is not all that small ? To me, yes, it does mean that, and among all the senseless politicking and communal violence and terrorist deaths, that’s at least one small comfort to me.

But we also have rabble rousers like Raj Thakeray and more generally the Shiv Sena and its various avataars , who, forget Nepalis , will not even accept Indians from Bihar and Nepal into Mumbai. What can one say about that, or do about that ?

Finally: Some time in the pre-liberalisation era , I had meeting with an Englishman. He was most upset that India had high customs duties and other trade barriers. He was a torch-bearer for free trade and I was his punching bag for all the ills of India’s trade policy. At one point I asked him, if the UK so strongly believed in free trade, why did they not allow Indian workers to feely enter the UK ? We had no further discussion.

Tags: raj thakeray, shiv sena, mumbai, usa, immigration, india, nepal

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Sep 01, '08

Nationality ; Indian. Caste : English Medium

I have long felt that in India , the ability to speak and communicate in English is not just another skill; it is also the membership to a caste. And then I saw an article in a newspaper a few months back that confirmed my thinking. It said that a sociological survey in Mumbai found that the percentage of intercaste marriages where both partners spoke English was three times that of intercaste marriages where only one partner spoke English. So here is a ray of hope that the caste system is not as immutable as it previously was and can indeed be overcome.

As kids , one of the way we described students from many other schools was” HMT”… which was not an abbreviation for the HMT watches already a household name in the 60’s and 70’s. HMT stood for “Hindi Medium Types”, a kind of a dismissive description for children who went to schools that were not ‘English medium”. This was the beginning of a brand new modern post-independence caste, but we had yet to see its full might. In subsequent years we have all seen innumerable and sometimes funny matrimonial advertisements for “convent educated” brides, (sometimes “convented” is the word used) . So here the new caste was invading matrimonial boundaries. We also saw new schools claiming to be “100 percent English medium”. This is rather like the Gurukuls of the olden days where admission was reserved only for Brahmins.

And now the sociological study from Mumbai; to me it confirms that the “English Medium” caste has arrived and is firmly in place.

While, for an Indian, being able to communicate in English is undoubtedly of tremendously great advantage, I have a feeling its not a completely unmixed blessing. To my mind, the English speaking Indians need to be aware of the following:

• We should not be dismissive of those Indians who cannot speak English. This is one reason why the English speaking Indian middle class can never understand the power of leaders like Lalu Prasad Yadav , Mayawati or Karunanidhi. Remember that in India the number of people who speak English is still less than 200 million. The remaining 800 million plus Indians speak a language other than English.
• The dominance of world politics for the last 200 or so years, first by great Britain and now by the USA, has made our own views too anglo-centric and narrow. We think the French and Italians are funny, because the English and Americans have told us that they are funny. We need to step out of this blind-spot and absorb good ideas and wisdom from other cultures.

Endpiece: have you noticed that a fairly noticeable number of profiles on networking/ friendship sites place a premium on “command over English” as a desirable quality for potential friends/ mates . So I asked some of my friends: would you like to make friends with a very nice man ..educated, good-looking, courteous, but one who did not know any English ? The answers varied from long hmmms and haws to a clear NO !!

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Aug 18, '08

Dho dala !! My story of washing machines

I think in the last 20 or so years, no other household appliance has done as much for the Indian middle class home as the washing machine. My household goes into panic every time the machine breaks down.

As a child I had only heard that in far away lands there were machines that washed clothes and some years later I saw these huge things in laundry shops, but they were far from becoming household appliances even in the west. So when we got our first washing machine, somewhere in the mid eighties, there was a fair bit of excitement. It was a simple twin-tub (Videocons semi-automatic VNA 800) that did a reasonable job, but suddenly washing clothes became an entertainment rather than drudgery. I must have read the instruction manual several times over, with more interest than a best-seller and each time discovered a new feature.

We marveled at the high pitched hum of the dryer-tub and beamed happy smiles when the clothes came out nearly dry. We watched with satisfaction as the washing tub removed the dirt from clothes and the water turned a muddy grey-brown. It was as if the Ganga was washing away our sins and cleansing our soul. Even though the washer and dryer BOTH had automatic timers, we stood respectfully through the complete washing cycle. We traded out favourite moments-in-washing with friends and relatives.

More practically, the maid taking a few days off was no longer so dreadful. And I think the maid was also very happy that she no longer had to wash clothes, though she wasn’t as yet allowed to operate the machine.

Over a period of time, the twin-tub was replaced by a front loader. It washes better, the clothes don’t get mangled and one can use fabric-softeners and conditioners. But the initial romance has died. Running the washing machine is no longer as entertaining as it used to be. Also as its fully automatic, I don’t have to watch-and-wash.

Is it just me getting old or do I need a new more exciting washing machine ?

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Jul 25, '08

Only in India and others

Only in India ..

Quoted in the newspaper a few months ago…… Amaan Ali Bangash son of sarod maestro Amjad Ali Khan “ I have called off my engagement with Ms X due to personal reasons” . Omigoddd, if you hadn’t clarified, we would have all assumed it was due to reasons of national security.

Long back…, J H Patel , Chief Minister of Karnataka. Speaking about Veerappan the sandalwood smuggler. “If I want I can catch Veerappan in 15 days”. Apparently Patel’s wife had asked him to go easy on Veerappan because Veerappan was suffering from diarrhea.

Say it with flowers: I haven’t traveled in a Bangalore municipal transport bus in a very long time now. But long back when I did do so, usually during the evening peak hour, 2 distinct fragrances (or smells, depending upon your personal inclinations) assailed my senses (very Victorian English phrase). One was the aroma of “arrack” from unwashed, unkempt men. The other, unquestionably more pleasant, was the fragrance of jasmine flowers worn by women returning home from work. It made the crowded, stuffy, swaying travel experience that much nicer. Sadly fewer and fewer women wear flowers nowadays. I don’t recall anyone from my friends or acquaintances who do so. Yes its “traditional”, its “old-world” its “small town”. But it’s so nice. I wonder if someday one can hope to see women in Bangalore with jeans and jasmine flowers.

Broken Hindi. This is how disaster can strike when a Bengali teaches Hindi to a Tamilian. It was Debashis, my hostel mate teaching Hindi to Srinivas, another hostel-mate. So one day Srini walked up to me and Said …”tumhaare ghar mein koi mar gaya hai”. Now , this obviously, shocked me. So I asked Srinivas, how do you know? He replied “Smell aa raha hai”. Now things were getting pretty interesting, considering that my ghar was 300 km away, and people at home had at least one bath a day. Srini then accompanied me to my room. There was indeed a faint bad smell here. A pigeon had got trapped in the balcony drain and had died. I explained to Srini , the language blunder he had made. He then told me that Debashis was teaching him hindi, and then I understood what had happened. In Bengali, the word for room/ kamra and house/ ghar is the same.. “bari” and so too, the word for “koi” and “kuchh”. So Srini, instead of saying “tumhaare kamre mein kuchh mar gaya hai” ended up killing someone.

Coming soon….

Broken china

Family room

Inflation

Tags: bangalore, flowers, music, politics

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May 24, '08

The Beauty Context

(This post is not very educative or humorous..just the rambling of an idle mind)

I have always wondered if all of us have the same perception of beauty. It’s not the “eye of the beholder” thing, but the issues connected with the race, nationality and culture of the beholder and the object beheld. For example, would Indians find a Miss China as beautiful as the Chinese themselves? I am speaking here only about feminine beauty and of the face. Is there a magic face that is considered beautiful all over the world? Are large eyes universally considered beautiful? Or how about thick lips ?

I though one way of checking this out was to conduct the following experiment. Take face pictures of beauty contest winners or film-stars from countries like India, China, Japan, Uk, France Russia, Indonesia, USA, Brazil, etc. Basically a selection of countries covering the major ethnic groups of the whole world. Then ask a group of Eskimos to select a picture of a beautiful Eskimo woman. Similarly from other tribal groups such as the Aborigines from Australia the Maoris from NZ, the Red Indians, the European Gypsies, the Indian Todas and Lambadis and so on. This covers the minority ethnic groups. So let’s say we now have 30 pictures.

Next select 30 people (men or women who could be the same people that selected the pictures) from these groups and ask them to rate the pictures on a scale of 1 to 10. The scores would tell us if beauty is a shared perception or if it is not a shared perception.

But there is a problem. In fact 2 problems. For the experiment to be authentic, statistics needs that the people who select pictures and the people who rate them, should be un-corrupted representatives of their ethnic group. Now there are 2 problems with this. How does one find “unbiased” selectors and unbiased judges? By unbiased I mean people whose beauty perceptions have not been modified by influences from other cultures.

First, thanks to human migrations in the last several thousand years, genes have been pretty freely mixed about, destroying the concept of “pure” regional beauty. India is a very good example. In India we are a mix of Caucasian, Mongoloid and Negro races ourselves. (see footnote) . We therefore have very few mainstream communities who are racially “pure”. So this is the historical bias, and applies not only to India but to many other countries. For a quick look at human migration see this very interesting link

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/journey/

Second is the bias due to cultural interactions in modern times. This has been specially magnified with the arrival of satellite television and the dominance of white-culture (read American / European) in our media in India. Among the educated Indian middle class, the perception of beauty is very heavily influenced by the Greek concept. This is especially strong in ‘English-medium” Indians.

I m hoping someone will conduct this experiment. Or maybe someone already has. Finally, could the findings be put to some use? Would advertisers be able to create a single campaign with one face that can be used all across the world?

Footnote: According to a widely accepted theory in anthropology, there are three major races. These are the Caucasian, the Mongoloid and the Negro. A very large percent of the world population (say 90 percent) is covered by these three races or a mix of these three. In India the closest examples of the undiluted races are Kashmiris (Caucasian) , people from the north east (mongoloid) and the tribal groups from South India and Andaman islands (negroid).

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May 23, '08

In all probability …

In all probability …

Probability (or Px as mathematicians call it) is a much heard of but little understood mathematical concept. People often say..there is a good chance that this train ticket will get confirmed… or in all likelihood that Congress will get a majority in Karnataka . Now when you start putting a number on “good chance” or “all likelihood” , you have Px. So u can say there is a 70 percent chance that the ticket will get confirmed or there is a 80 percent chance that Congress will get majority (fat chance !!)

In more serious mathematics , Px is expressed as a number between 0 and 1. So if the likelihood of an event NOT happening is ZERO, we say Px= 0 and if it is certain to happen then we say Px= 1. Now here is where maths departs from day to day experience. What maths says is that there is NO event yet to happen where Px= 1. So for anything that has NOT YET happened , there is ALWAYS a chance, however small that it will not happen.

How about the event “The sun will rise tomorrow” ? Is it not certain to happen? Well , mathematicians say , yes it is MOST likely to happen, but NOT CERTAIN to happen. Px is very close to 1 (say 0.9999999999 and on) but less than 1. Here is how to understand this

· Let us say the earth has a life of 6 billion years. On the last day of earths life , there will be no sunrise on the next day (there will in fact be no next day).
· There is also a possibility that the Earth may be completely blown up and cease to exist even tonight as a result of some unknown cosmic catastrophe.

But cosmic events are not the only things that involve Px. Everyday life has many examples. Casino’s use it extensively. It’s also used in the design (how many) of service counters to provide at a railway station, or in a supermarket or in deciding insurance premiums. Here is a very interesting example.

When a borewell is drilled for water, it sometimes ends up dry. So the money is literally down the drain. Now with this risk how can farmers dig wells in rural areas ? Insurance companies step in. From previous data on wells in a particular area, they estimate the probability of a dry well (say 5 out of every 100). Then they calculate a premium. So now the farmer can pay a small amount to overcome the risk. If the well is dry, the insurance company re-imburses expense to the farmer. If the well is not dry, the company keeps the insurance premium. Over hundreds of drillings they make a profit and the farmers’ risk is taken care of . Medical , accident and auto insurance all work on the same principle.

To be continued…

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May 19, '08

Pressing to impress- the Iron in my soul.

Pressing to impress- the Iron in my soul.

This post has been partly inspired by a line in one of PG Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster novels. One of Bertie’s friends is wooing a woman, and Wodehouse says “it was difficult for him to iron his trousers even as he was pressing his suit.”

I like to wear my trousers (even denim jeans) neatly ironed. Neatly meaning, that there should be no wrinkles AND the crease should be sharp, forward looking and firm. And for perfection, there should be just one crease. Not even the hint of a second one. Prima facie this should not be a problem and in fact was NOT problem till a combination of 3 separate and important global events happened in the last few years. Just goes to show, in a manner of speaking, how a single sneeze in Bangalore’s Murugesh pallya can trigger global warming. Read on…

The first was the coming of the current fashion of “flat front” in pants. Now many men who dare to wear flat-fronts, have their own fronts about as flat as a well inflated football. Since I DO have a flat tummy (or no tummy) , the flat-fronts trend suits me to a T(rouser), and I am quite grateful to the blokes who brought in this trend. But this has not been an unmixed blessing. For some reason, known only to the same fashion designer blokes and trouser manufacturers, flat fronts are sold without a factory-ironed crease. Not only are they flat at the waist, they are flat (i e without an ironed crease) all the way down. This I don’t like, and so when I buy a new trouser I make sure I get a crease ironed in ASAP.

Had the matter ended there, life would have been happy and wrinkle-free. But no, it was not to be. I soon found that most flat-fronts cannot ever be properly ironed with a regular front crease. If you try to match the seams at the trouser cuff and put in a crease, there will be ugly wrinkles at the hip. If you make the hip wrinkle-less, the seams at the cuff will be poles apart and u get a crease that’s looking sideways as if in suspicion. While battling with this major problem of modern day living I was lucky enough to bump into someone from the garment industry. I asked him why it was so difficult to put in a proper crease in readymade flat fronts when in the olden ages of pleated pants and neighbourhood darzi’s it was all so simple. The neighborhood darzi’s trousers never once presented this problem to humanity. He looked furtively around and made sure no one could overhear what he was now going to tell me. Then in a whisper and a smile reserved only for fellow conspirators, he let the cat out of the bag. I quote him. One of the major challenges in garment manufacturing has always been to use a 2 dimensional material (fabric) and turn it into an article that will be used to cover a 3 dimensional object (people). In modern design, we work out this solution using computer aided engineering. The result is a flat front that fits perfectly when worn , but isn’t easy to iron. This also , in addition, optimizes fabric use. And then , with a wink , he added. This is also the reason why designers prefer female models who are nearly 2 dimensional. Its easier for the computer to find the solutions when the surfaces involved are flat !

Wellllll… I was speechless…..and of course crease-less as well.

And , now the third global event. Only in this case it is a person. Its Venky the laundry-wala . Like his many fellow tradesmen in Bangalore and other Indian large cities, he inhabits the basement / car park of the apartment block that I live in. He works hard all day and parties harder starting early evening. His wife in fact works harder and doesn’t party. (laundry-wala’s are always hard “pressed’” for time !! ) . Not for him the trivial problems of a crease in a flat front trouser. He picks up the thing with all the care of a blacksmith, lays it flat as fast as he can, and then with a resigned spiritual serenity slides his 10 kilo coal-burning iron over it . And if the seams don’t match at the cuff or the creases in the two legs look as if they have had a major disagreement , so be it. A single pass is all that your Gap or Colour Plus pants merit from Aruna, and no worry if the crease he has just made, has been newly created to keep company with the three already created previously by him. He could not have been less than an Arjun in a previous life. So I now have several flat front trousers that have multiple and squabbling creases. (The “iron” has entered my soul. I think I will strangle Venky this weekend).Or perhaps, 'press' his throat)

So that’s it. There is no punch line. But I am reminded of a line that my older brother used to say when I was in my teens. For heavy dates I used to carefully iron my own trousers. (Heavy date meant watching more than one girl from a distance of less than 50 feet. Please note the words in bold.) My brother would say “Press, press no impress !!” . Well , to give the devil his dude, he was always more successful than me. He got nearer than 25 feet several times. And once he ACTUALLY talked to 2 girls.

Please excuse me, now. I now have pressing matters at hand. Venky has just brought in a mangled flat front and I have no choice but to put in a new crease myself.

Tags: laundry, trousers, iron

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Mar 29, '08

How not to be horn-i in Bangalore

This is a re-cycled post...one of those which i felt needs a fresh look.

Please forgive me for using the “h” word, but I couldn’t get the right one. Horn_i here means a driver who frequently uses the vehicle horn, mostly without any positive or useful effect. This having been clarified, henceforth the word will be spelt “horni”.

A fictional study conducted by a reputed automobile association has come up with some rather startling facts. It seems that in Bangalore, yellow-plate passenger vehicles (cabs, sumos/ qualis, mini-buses etc) on an average give a 16 percent higher mileage than other vehicles. And if it is used for call –centres / BPO companies, the figure goes further up to 18 percent. When I read this report, the engineer in me was intrigued.

So what is going on? How does one improve fuel efficiency? Well the bad news is that you can’t get higher mileage just by changing the colour of the number plate to yellow. You have to be seriously horni to get there. Here is how it works. As a result of continuous horni_ing, an envelope of charged particles is created around the front of the vehicle. This is a low-pressure area. So the air from the rear of the vehicle pushes the vehicle forward. Of course by this time the driver has created a further envelope in the front. This natural-assist is what reduces fuel-consumption. All of this of course requires skill.

And just how horni can you get? There are a number of places you can go to learn the art and science of being horni. Mostly these are places that are run as offshoots of driving schools. We met up with one of the people running a school. He was one Mr. Honkerappa from assholenarsipur Horni Driving School. He said that to really do a good job at being horni, you have to take at least 40 hours of instruction. He did however offer some tips. Here they are

· Well, the driver must know precisely when to be horni. Some recommended situations are: at traffic lights when there is no space for any other vehicle to move an inch forward or to the side;
· For added saving, being horni a split second after the traffic signal changes from red to green is highly recommended. Never mind the fact that you are sixth in line and it will be a full minute before the other vehicles in front of you move. Just be horni and see the performance go up.
· You must also recognize when someone else is being horni and hogging all the action. Never allow the vehicle in front of you to have an empty space in front of his vehicle. For the natural-assist to work, the space in front of YOUR vehicle must be empty. So be horni with all your might.

We also asked him if there was any special equipment or car accessory that was recommended. He suggested model PITA from M/s Balasubramanian Horn Company of Coimbatore. It’s a huge hit already with all call centre vehicles in Bangalore. You cant miss its strident / rude sound on Bangalore roads. It endows the driver with a rudeness quotient far beyond his biological limits. And its been proven to improve horniness. Interestingly, the advertising tagline of the company is “You can’t be seriously horni if you don’t have Bals”

Finally, are there any side effects or can one be horni all the time? Well occasionally you may come across a driver who takes offence at the rudeness. He may actually gun you down. It has been reported in the US of A. Then of course you can’t be horni around hospitals and schools. In my own case, I have a special sound–activated switch in my car. If someone is being too horni, the switch kicks in and my car remains stalled in front of the horne?y driver for 5 minutes. By which time he has lost it.

Recommended Reading:

· Medico Legal Issues in Horni Driving by Mr. Balasubramanian, Coimbatore.
· First Aid on the Road published by Bangalore Call centre Drivers’ Association
· If you are Horni, don’t do it from the backseat… Anonymous

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Mar 17, '08

Freewill or Destiny >> Part II

In Part I of this post, I had tried to put in perspective our religious and cultural background on the subject of destiny In this part I will bring out the importance of action and effort.

I am believer in free-will. When someone dies in an accident or illness due to lack of medical care, or a natural disaster, it is not because it was due to “uparwala” (god/ destiny) but because those of us here (neechewala’s) refused to act.

Let me illustrate this with a few examples:

• When India became independent, the average longevity was 45 to 47 years. Now, 60 years later, it is 65 years. By any standards, this is a remarkable achievement. And how did this happen? Not by an act of god, but by the efforts of some dedicated leaders and men. India invested in better health care, nutrition, hygiene, vaccinations and so on. By no means is the job over, but the longevity HAS risen by nearly 50 percent. So what our preceding generations put down due to “uparwala” was actually due to the neglect of the “neechewalas”.. the Brits and the Royalty… ( is there anyone still around who disputes they were good for nothing a**holes ?)

• Then again, the east coast of India (specially the Andhra Pradesh coast) is prone to cyclonic storms. Till the 70’s every alternate year, sometimes every year, there would be 1000’s of deaths in that area, and we would read about it in the newspapers. Many thousands more would be left homeless. To the immediate relatives of the victims and those who lived in surrounding areas, this was again “uparwala” at work. But then suddenly someone put him out of business, at least in on the east coast of India. The government installed a coastal cyclone warning system. So when a cyclone is forecast, people are warned and they move to safer places. We still have occasional deaths, but the numbers are typically less than a 100 in any year. Unfortunately, “uparwala” is till in business in Bangladesh, because they don’t have a cyclone warning system.

There are still the tsunamis and the earthquakes which are unpredictable and cause large scale death and destruction. I guess it’s a matter of time till we learn to deal with that.

Look around you , and you will find that most of the tragedies (and the celebrations and successes) are the result of inaction or action at various levels, and not because of the unknown forces of destiny. Life at the day-to-day level is governed by cause-and-effect and effort-and-result rather than the randomness of fate.

So what is the moral of the story ? The moral of the story is that in India , to progress, we should elect sensible people and parties to represent us, and we should demand more from our elected representatives at all levels. That is the way we will be masters of our own destiny. We should believe in the power of action, rather than leave things to destiny.

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