Cockroaches on the move!

 With the Cockroach Janata Party (CJP) making headlines (certainly not on Godi media, but everywhere else), there is both entertainment as well a great hope.  The hope is that this satirical act and response to a stray comment by a legal authority, is talking, and talking perfect practical sense, which is being recognised.  The very fact that the government is banning and closing and accusing it of all 'anti-national' traits, is enough proof to say that there is some truth behind CJPs thought. The best aspect of this 'movement' - if one may say so - is that it is youth who are driving the process. Whether it sustains the momentum and results in some radical changes and growth, helping Indian democracy and future, is something to be seen (this statement qualifies me too to be a member of the CJP - lazy and waiting for someone else to work for the results!)

That said, I liked the following summary of the eligibility criteria: (an extract from the article of Fr Jose Maliekal) 

Dipke used AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to design the website and manifesto within two hours. The movement's eligibility criteria are openly satirical yet strategically inclusive: unemployed ("by force, by choice, or by principle"), lazy ("refers only to physical activity"), chronically online ("at least 11 hours daily, including bathroom breaks"), and able to rant professionally ("content must be sharp, honest, and point at something that matters").

I specially like the last criteria! 

Salesian Youth Movement (SYM)

Salesian Youth Movement (SYM) is an apt name. And I think we Salesians should not lose sight of the meaning of this very name... a movement. Not an event, a mere celebration or an achievement. But a movement. A process. 

The greatest challenge we face is to regularly ask ourselves (and subsequently, the youth) as to what is the PURPOSE of this movement. Without a clarity and consensus about this purpose and goal, our youth groups, fests, gatherings and other such events are scattered mount Tabor experiences – leading to a good and nice feeling at the moment, but of no real use in the long run. 

The greatest risk is that we make our youth dumb and superficial. By nature, the youth are a dynamite; but if they are not challenged well beyond their capacity, they become hollow and settle for the least of standards and capacities.

Salesian Past Pupils

One day in 1847, Don Bosco called into a barber's shop. He got into conversation with an 11-year-old assistant whose father had died and ended up asking the barber to let the lad Carlo Gastini have a go at shaving him.  It was an ordeal for Carlo and Don Bosco!

Not much later, Carlo's mother died and, remembering Don Bosco's kindness to him, Carlo wen to Don Bosco who welcomed him with open arms. He took up book binding, and ran the workshop for a number of years and only left the Oratory when he was able to support himself.  Now and then he would return to Valdocco to greet Don Bosco and receive an encouraging word from him. 

Carlo Gastini in the workshop amidst the boys 

Then one day ... on 24 June 1870, feast of John the Baptist, when the Oratory was celebrating Don Bosco's 'name-day' Carlo, by now 34 years old, has prepared a surprise for his beloved Don Bosco.  He brings along a group of former pupils of the Oratory. He has a speech ready.  He explains that 'the old boys of the Oratory' have formed themselves into a group and have come to him, on his name-day to present him with a gift as a 'sign of affection for our father Don Bosco' and their appreciation for the education he had given them. 

As a sign of their undying affection they have brought him a set of coffee cups - not an expensive gift, but one of great sentimental value.  The exchange embodied what the Past Pupils' movement came to signify: appreciation for the education received; repaying their efforts by living as song of Don Bosco, showing the world they could at the same time be, as Don Bosco wanted, good Christians and honest citizens. 

From that first group considered to be the 'mother' association, a vast movement of Past Pupils of Don Bosco arose and is today world-wide. 

[Extract from the article, 'It began with a set of coffee cups!'  in The Salesian Bulletin of the Province of Ireland, October - December 2019 Issue, p. 6.]

Time and railways

Today we commenced the winter time here in England.  I do not know of any other country that adjusts its clock twice a year.

Only last week did I learn that for quite some time in England, people did not have a national time or clock.  They only had local time or regional time.  It was only with the railways becoming a means of national transport that people felt the need to have a time followed across the country.  That's how the history of having a unified system of calculating time across the country began.  And it is only after 1807, when horse-drawn carriages were used on tramlines, which eventually led to the evolution of railways, that England began to follow one clock.

This once again proves the theory that time is nothing but a record of motion.  If not for the national rail network, people would have followed their own respective time and no one would have had serious difficulties.  More than transport, I think it has all to do with network.  I guess, if the internet were discovered before the establishment of the railways, even then there would have been the notion of a single clock being followed.  However, in this case there would have been some wider consensus on following a particular clock than mere national boundaries.  

Machine Gun Preacher

Last night I watched the movie Machine Gun Preacher (here's the official site). It was quite interesting to note the transformation of Sam Childers from a drug addict to a 'missionary' with a very definite and clear vision. The movie is based on the book Another Man's War and describes the story of an American who takes up the gun, again, albeit for a different cause now. That too in a far off land, Uganda to save children from becoming victims of a bloody civil war.

It also in a subtle way shows the swings of the 'hero' between his personal life and the chosen extended family; between reliance on God and carrying out His mission and his own determination to 'set things right'; between being a preacher and a mercenary...

Gerard Butler, who plays the lead role, does a great work and as one review of the movie reads, his "born again, dead again" characterisation is something that makes the movie realistic. An interesting angle to this movie is the recent outcry on social media against Kony and the 'wave' to get rid of him and save the children of Uganda and South Sudan.

Besides these contemporary and actual facts, the movie raises several moral questions. The most challenging of them is perhaps the one posed directly by Sam Childers himself at the end of the movie.

... If your child or family member was abducted today, if a mad man came in or a terrorist came in, abducted your family member or your child, and if I said to you, "I can bring your child home," does it matter how I bring him home?

In another instance in the movie, a relief worker questions Sam Childers' 'rogue' means of carrying out his 'ministry', to which he replies that he does the same thing as she, but in a different way. Having heard all his arguments, she concludes, "Kony too had the same reasons when he began his reign of terror!"

I suppose it is a thin line that one treads here. Killing a human being is always wrong, but does become permissible if that one wrong preserves and promotes the lives of several children?

(last photo: the real Sam Childers)

Defining corruption

Justice is intrinsically related to love. This is a proven fact. But that it is also very intricately related to truth is something that needs to be understood. The recent movement started by the social activist Anna Hazare to put a policy in place to curb corruption is a very novel one. That there is rampant corruption at every level of administration is a known fact and one to which most of us are resigned to. So when such a zealous activist takes up the cudgels against corruption, it naturally attracts attention and is surely going to do much good for the common man. Of course, every one to whom it is beneficial will find a way of making this work for his/her own good.

I was only trying to define corruption. The Oxford dictionary states thus:

the process by which a word or expression is changed from its original state to one regarded as erroneous or debased

It was only then it struck me that there is something more that is linked to justice than love. If justice is denied it is injustice. But what if justice has not been denied but the facts leading to the principles on which justice is claimed are manipulated. Hence according to me corruption is nothing but creating a wedge between truth and justice.