Relativity....

I have moved into Bangalore for a while now. Working and managing the house is difficult. In the US, vacuuming the house once in 2 weeks was more than enough. In India, sweeping & wiping the floor is required on a daily basis due to the amount of dust! I hired a new maid for utensils & cleaning the floor. I have a washing machine ….phew! What a relief!

A muslim woman, Salma was to join but she got her sister-in-law Reshma instead. Each of them has 3 kids; this I got to know on different occasions of casual chat. I was put to think. These women obviously don’t come from well to do families. The govt. has been encouraging 1 child since a decade now to control the exploding Indian population.

And here we have a community that multiplies even today like olden times. Of course we can’t point it out. It could be seen as a religious difference. Population control should come within to every Indian considering how will their child have a better future.

Now these 2 women have 6 kids…these will in turn multiply to 18…that is a lot! And the biggest concern in my mind is what will be the future for the 6 children they have now. The little ones go to school now, but obviously they won’t be able to support their higher education or even high school.

I forgot to mention my maid’s husband is bed-ridden due to an accident, that is why she is working in houses or her husband would have never let her work. L

 I watched the new show TerraNova on Star World yesterday. It’s a Steven Spielberg TV show so I want to really follow from day 1. It’s a futuristic show from 22^nd century set in some 2147 year. I’ll just share the gist of the first show. Our planet earth is unfit to live now. They use a ‘re-breather’ to live a healthy life else the polluted atmospheric air deteriorates their health. The atmosphere is dark and brown & dusty with no sunshine or greenery. The lifestyle in future is too systematic. It’s a world of Steve Jobs really! Everything is electronic and touch & magnetic & totally automatic! The system is run on very strict rules. The show starts with one of the basic rules – A Family can have a maximum of TWO children. Any more than two is a VIOLATION and is strictly punished. The main family in focus breaks this law and has a third child resulting in the husband being jailed. In the meantime the scientists and govt together have build a system that takes us back to the past in the dinosaur age like a time travel thing, where there is lots of sunlight and lots of oxygen. The basic plot is that humans have exhausted Earth to such an extent that it’s not a habitat that supports life or growth and the answer to our future existence is in the past now. And we try to use this second chance to not repeat our mistakes like wars, pollution, etc.

The reference of this show to my above discussion is pretty obvious, the rule per family to multiply. Though it seems unrealistic to make it a law, looking at the Indian population such rules might become a reality in the future, may be even before 2147!