How should I treat a beggar?

This is a question which has given me trouble for quite sometime. This might sound like a trivial issue but when I'm confronted with the situation normally two competing views come to my mind. One is that the beggar might really be in need and so I should give him some money (how much is a function of local (in time) generosity, money available - believe me there are times when I have less than the beggar himself i.e., zero, and so many other factors). The other conflicting view presented by the ever logical not-so-generous people is that I'm encouraging begging by giving money to them. If we try analyzing the situation a bit more we find that there are many more possible actions other than the ones mentioned above. For eg,
a.I could buy him food so that he doesn't go and misuse the money for something like drinking or even lose it to someone stronger.
b. I could give him some employment so that he can lead a more dignified life.
c. I could try finding out what made him choose begging and try to look for a solution.
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z. I could just shoo him away saying I can't help you!.
I don't intend to get into the question of whether a beggar leads a dignified life or not. For now we'll go with the common view that a beggar's profession is not dignified. Here let's try analyzing the possibilities other than giving money to the beggar. Options other than the last one are no doubt better than giving money to the beggar but, the question is, how many of us really do that? When people say I'm encouraging begging by giving money to the beggar, which is not a good thing, I agree with them, but what makes one choose the last option of doing nothing. Now a natural question that arises is, what is my obligation towards the beggar to make me choose anything other than the last option. The answer is simple - the beggar doesn't say "give me money!" at least the ones I have seen say "I'm hungry please give me money, or my mother is about to die and I need money to save her life so please give me money, or me and my small sister have not had food for two days so please give us money, or I'm handicapped and can't earn so please give me money etc". Now when I say beggar says something he needn't open his mouth and utter it. If a fool is waiting for that then this blog is not him. I'm probably being too harsh but what I mean here is that when a handicapped beggar comes to me its implied that he says I can't work so please give me money.
I don't know how true any of the statements a beggar makes is but the question is what if that is indeed true. It is this "what if" which troubles anyone with a heart. To know the answer I need to investigate. Most of the times I neither have the time nor the patience to do so which, I believe, is the case with most of the people other than the ones who do social service. Strictly speaking I should take the pain to find out and that is what is the "perfect thing to do". But here I'm looking into what if I choose not do the perfect thing. What is the next best? The answer that comes to me is - definitely not shooing him away because when I do that what I'm essentially telling the beggar is - "I don't give a damn about your mother dying, your sister being hungry or even you starving to death, I don't care just buzz off!". Let's face it! This is what we mean since we haven't taken the effort to find out. When I choose not to find out about his condition how can I say that he's trying to fool me?. Let's say that the beggar is really saying the truth, that his mother is really about to die and he doesn't have money to save her. Me giving whatever small amount I give, could save someone.
How can people be so cruel? Without even finding out what the real situation is how can they say I can't give money. Now again people argue saying they have actually seen many cases where the beggar is cheating them. Even if I have seen a million such cases how can I be sure about the one in front of me? Did I find out? If not how can I not help him? Isn't that completely inhuman? I'm not giving him all of my property. What I give him is probably not even a a thousandth of what I earn in a month. What do I loose? Now the other idiot says that if I give money to one then many will ask. So what? Let's say even if I give to ten beggars I don't loose much. So what is the problem? The problem is not with the situation it is with character and a little ability to think. May be people don't think, but once they are exposed to this argument and then if they shy away from giving anything then, I think, they are heartless. They seriously don't care about someone dying. Only when they'll face such a situation where they'll have to beg for money to save some of their near and dear one's will they realize this. May be that day they will also beg, not by going into streets but, by forwarding emails.

Corruption: very difficult to fight or is it?

Anyone would agree that corruption is one of the greatest evils that our country needs to fight today. Now one might say that the cause of corruption, which is not an issue I intend to get into here, is to be fought. Let's just look at corruption itself. People keep telling that its very difficult to fight corruption. Is this really true? I don't think so. All that is needed is a resolution from each and every person that he (the usage is strictly out of laziness to write he/she or she both of which are longer and tedious) will never bribe. Sticking to this resolution in most cases is not difficult at all. Its not that people bribe only in life-threatening situations. I agree it takes real guts to stand up to a situation like that or even worse, one in which one's near and dear ones' lives may be under threat. Most of the times we do it just because we don't want to
a. waste time
b. stand in loooooong queues.
c. waste money.
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z. be stupid
What an irony? A service to the nation in disguise is being called wastage of time. How better can time be utilized? How better can money be spent than spending it rightfully according to rules? How smarter can one get than helping one's own country fight corruption? Are these even reasons? People say "why should only I change ?" and the answer is only when I change can the whole transformation be complete. If 99 are corrupt out of 100 then my change will bring the number down to 98. Now that doesn't sound significant. It does even less when real figures are taken into account. But the fact is if corruption has to be eradicated I have to stop. I'm an integral part of the country. The least one can do is changing himself. One need not go around trying to change others. All that is needed is a personal change in everyone of us.
We are not even ready to sacrifice the smallest of our conveniences leave aside being tortured. Just imagine the amount of torment that our freedom fighters went through. What did they fight for? What did they achieve? Why did they sacrifice their lives? Can we even imagine surviving the smallest of torture that they went through? Just imagine our nails being plucked one by one, our hair being plucked one by one, our tongue being pulled out till we can't speak, our throat being scraped till we can't make a sound, our skin being cut bit by bit, our iris being torn, our eye being removed, our teeth being broken one by one, our tooth being drilled till we go unconscious, ourselves being skinned, our backs burnt by hot iron, ourselves lying on charcoal, ourselves lying on ice for hours together, a current passing through our genitals, ourselves being castrated, the resulting wounds being dressed with salt, pepper and lime. Does that sound too grotesque? But what is the limit of torture? It can go beyond the boundaries of most people's thinking till it can keep the victim barely alive. How do we know what all our freedom fighters faced? Probably much worse and still they didn't give up. Most of us surely can't take all this. But who is asking us to go through this? All that is needed is some extra patience, a little extra effort, a little thinking from our side. This can curb most of corruption. Very rare are the cases when it goes to the extent of torture or life-threatening situations. We must be able to stand those also in the longer run. But at least we can bear the pain in our legs due to standing for five minutes in a queue. Surely we can go to the RTO office a few extra times to get our license the right way. Surely we can travel in the general compartment of a train, or quit travel when we don't have a confirmed ticket. Surely we can pay the right fine when we have broken a rule by mistake. Isn't it shameful that we got independence due to the struggle of patriots, who gave up their lives or worse suffered torture, and are living like this?
To hell with people who say that the country won't change just by me changing. I need to change first. The country can't change without me because the country is not exclusive of me.

samskRta transliteration

The first thing one notices when one tries to write samskRta, eg. a name like Ramakrishnan (raamakR^iShNan - ITRANS) in english is that there is too much room for mispronunciation. The reason being that english has very few letters in its alphabet to unambiguously convey the right pronunciation for not only samskRta words but also words of its own. Here I don't wish to argue about the not-so-intelligent and not-so-not-very-dumb character of the english language. I will first make an attempt to motivate the necessity of a samskRta transliteration scheme. The reasons are many. Today english is being accepted as a common language of communication all around the world with a few exceptions. Especially in India, land where almost all of samskRta works of interest originated, english has almost become the language of scientific research. This when combined with a new found global interest in samskRta works (this interest has been at least 100 years old but not older than western science itself) gives rise to the need of typing samskRta using standard english keyboards. Even engines like LaTeX (at least the versions I have come across) interpret only english script to produce devanAgri output. Usage of an english keyboard has almost become indispensable. So there is a need for developing a scheme to write samkRta using the letters of english alphabet which can be read by anyone unambiguously. Also for engines like LaTeX to interpret english alphabet to give devanAgri output one needs to find a unique map from single or bunch of english letters to samkRta letters.
Many transliteration schemes have been formulated for serving this purpose. I think that the transliteration schemes available (atleast the standard ones I have come across especially International Alphabet of Sankrit Transliteration - IAST and ITRANS) for writing samkRta in english are very cumbersome to write. I'll mainly argue against the IAST, ITRANS and Harvard-Kyoto schemes here. One can refer to the following links for knowing the schemes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAST
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITRANS
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard-Kyoto
Firstly the IAST scheme is difficult to write by hand and impossible to write using most keyboards due to its unnecessary dots and hats above and below the letters. Even ITRANS with its RRi or R^i seems very stupid to write. Why write RRi or R^i when you can get done with just R? If the scheme suggested here is adopted, there would be no need for these hats, dots, ^ etc. The whole of samkRta script can be written unambigously just with letters in english alphabet. One of the key features of the english script, that is neglected in IAST, is the fact that english alphabet has small and capitalized letters. Now one possible motivation for this is capitalization of proper names. Here we are trying to write samskRta. When in samskRta there is no artificial restraint of capitalization of first letters of proper names then why impose that unnecessarily while writing samskRta names? Now one could argue that if there is an english and a samskRta name occuring in one sentence then the first letter of the english name would be capitalized and the samkRta one might not be. I don't see any problem with writing - Albert and rAmakRSNan were good friends. Also the purpose of introducing these transliterations is to write works in samskRta in english. These works normally won't have any non-samskRta terms. Now one could ask what if one reads even Albert in the above sentence with samkRta transliteration then this issue is not resolved even in others. To resolve this one could just put (e) before Albert to alert the reader that Albert is to be pronounced as an english name eg - (e)Albert and rAmakRSNan were good friends.
In my opinion the structures of IAST and ITRANS are not very logical and intuitive. For example why should one put those hats above and dots below the letters when one can easily do away with them by some simple thinking? The scheme used here would be intuitive to any logical person who wants to minimize his efforts in writing samkRta using english eg - lets analyze g (as in gopAla) and G (as in nIlameGashyAma). Now one might find addition of h after g for writing G more intuitive. Clearly one has to put more effort in writing gh (atleast while writing with hand) than G. Now a problem comes in extending this to d (as in dAmodara) and dh (as in mAdhava). Here we don't propose use of D for dh (as in mAdhusudana) because then one would have to use dh for D (as in makarakunDaladhara). Here we choose D and not dh for jaDaBarata because dh sounds closer to dh in shrIdhara than D (as in harimIDe). The reasoning can be extended for exception in t, th, T and Th usage similarly. Usage of sh for sh (as in hRSIkesha) is also an exception to the extention indicated above. The reason for this is if one uses S for sh (as in keshava) then one is left with sh or Sh for S (as in viSNu). Now the reason for rejecting usage of sh for S (as in kRSNa) is that sh is normally used by most people for shrI. If one uses Sh for S (as in kRSNa) then one has to spend more effort in the long run to write S for sh (as in shrIvAmana) and Sh for S (as in kRSNa) using a keyboard since he would have to unnecessarily capitalize s in both S and Sh. Instead if one uses sh for sh (as in shrIrAma) and S for S (as in kRSNa) then one circumvents the above mentioned problems.
When we come to usage of ng for (pangkajanABa) its more natural to use ng as it sounds closer to the letter needed. What we mean by sounding closer is that when one tries to pronounce n (as in nandalAlA) and g (as in gajendravaradA) together one hits the sound of ng (as in pangkajanABa). Usage of gny (as in yagnyanArAyaNa) is because again when one tries to speak g (as in govinda), n as in (ananta) and y (as in acyuta) together one hits something very close to the required sound.
The disadvantages of Harvard-Kyoto scheme (which is the closest among the three to ours) is the usage of G for gn, z for sh etc. Though these are easier to write these usages are extremely counter-intuitive. The reasons refuting usage of kh for K (as in Harvard-Kyoto) have already been mentioned above. The only motivation which remains now in using these above mentioned schemes is that they are accepted all over the world. Clearly that is not a reason to prevent one from inventing and using his own scheme which is more logical and easy to write.
A few words for comparison of schemes (I'm not even attempting to write IAST here)
ITRANS - kR^iShNaaShTami
Harvard-Kyoto - kRSNASTami
Ours - kRSNASTami

ITRANS - shriimadbhaagavatam
Harvard-Kyoto - zrImadbhAgavatam
Ours - shrImadBAgavatam

The Real Heroes of India

I was talking with some of my friends in IISc today evening. We started talking about The Great Chatrapati Shivaji (pronounced chatrapati shivAji). I can't believe that one of the guys talking to me doubted the greatness of chatrapati shivAji. He, I found out, respects the new shivAji (the boss) rajnikAnt. I really don't understand this. People in India, today, are forgetting real heroes like chatrapati shivAji and going behind some cheap filmstars. I think if we keep going this way there is no way our country is going to improve. We really have to rewrite our history textbooks and make the youth not just respect but idolize the Real Heroes of India like svAmi vivekAnandA, chatrapati shivAji etc. I don't understand how can one even question the greatness of someone like shivAji who was an ardent disciple of samartha rAmadAs and tukArAm. I think there are two levels of people - one who can be classified as Heroes and the others who inspired these heroes to be great. Its not in the capabilities of mere mortals to rate people in the latter class.

Taj Mahal Anthem

I think when one doesn't understand something one shouldn't really talk about it. What can one possibly understand about rAdhAkRSNa prema BAvam? Comparing it with something/anything else really hurts me. Anyway this is not the first time its happening. There are other songs in popular movies like lagAn where this is done. I'm not against freedom of expression but I think it is far from human to use it in a manner which hurts a whole community's feelings.