Consanguineous marriages were, and continue to be, a common practice among Indian families. Marriage partners were decided soon after the birth of the children. The families and the children were all mentally conditioned and nobody cared to think otherwise and the few who dared were ostracized. The offspring of such incestuous marriages were usually born with birth defects. Gradually over the decades, with education and exposure this practice has largely disappeared among the enlightened sections. But the bulk of our population still practices it due to sheer ignorance.

“Live only in a village that has a money lender, a physician and a perennial river …” is the ancient wisdom of Sumati Sataka. Ever since money replaced barter economy, money lending at a fair rate has become the essence of modern life. Everyone needs to borrow to tide over a contingency or to invest in a venture.

An acquaintance once remarked, “If anybody came up to me and said ‘India’s problems can be solved if the population is reduced by half’, I am willing to die”.

It doesn’t require such a great sacrifice to set India right. Nor does that kind of sacrifice guarantee things will be right in the end. Wasn’t our population half the present size only a few decades ago? Haven’t we managed to bungle? Far from any guaranteed success, we would have the additional problem of disposing off 500 million bodies!

We just have too many holidays. Don’t get me wrong. I am not a workaholic reformer who shuns fun and frolic and wishes to scrap the few fun and festival holidays we enjoy. Its just that because of State government, Central Government, Bank, and other myriad holidays there is too much disruption in the work routine. Then if you throw in a Congress, BJP, or TDP Bandh, a VIP death, a bank strike, the result is chaos. Not to forget the Election holidays. I am not exaggerating. Take the last 10 days of March for instance. On Saturdays banks work only half days and cheques are not cleared.

This is examination season. As winter ends, all talk is about the syllabus, examination, marks and grades. The kids are petrified. We see many young sleepless faces weighed down by the burdens of school education. Parents are even more worried, enquiring from friends and relatives about the best available options for their children’s future.

We are surrounded by myriad problems - minor irritations to crises of great magnitude. We are often upset about the way things work or don’t work. Many of these could easily be set right – like the traffic problems at intersections. All these problems bother us a great deal everyday; we talk about them at length and maybe hope that someone else will take care of them. But then their sheer number and complexity is enough to deter many well-meaning people from trying to do anything. And there are always the ‘cynics’ who dismiss the small individual efforts to make a difference.

A friend of mine was telling me that my column is always about what is wrong in the country or in Hyderabad – maybe giving impression to readers that I think there is nothing good in our society. It’s precisely because I see so many good things in our society that I think that we are not a doomed country and our problems are not intractable. Far from being a prophet of gloom and doom I am an optimist to the core and a very cheerful one at that. My anger is only at the gap between what is and what could easily be, and at the gulf between the promise and performance.

The carnage in Godhra and rest of Gujarat is a painful reminder that beneath the veneer of civilization, beastly impulses continue to lurk in our society. Thanks to mindless manipulation of power-hungry politicians, a local dispute over a place of worship became an intractable national crisis. Whatever be the origins, the Godhra tragedy could not have been the handiwork of ordinary Muslims. As a religious minority, Muslims are most vulnerable when such a ghastly incident takes place. Only foreign saboteurs could have hatched such a cruel conspiracy putting a whole community at risk.

A poor, migrant watchman’s family lives in a hut in my neighbourhood. One morning when walking along the road, a pet dog from a posh home rushed out and attacked him. It was several long minutes before the terrified watchman could free himself - but not before his right arm was severely bitten from wrist to shoulder. There were gaping wounds and severe bleeding, and almost half the skin on the arm was hanging loose. The petrified man returned home with difficulty – drenched in blood and perspiration.

The chief concern of an average urban middle-class housewife is her child’s admission to a prestigious private English medium school, or her inability to get cheap hired domestic help, preferably a child worker. Six years ago RK Laxman drew an insightful cartoon that depicts our society. Two boys – one healthy, standing erect in school uniform; the other weak, ill-clad and groaning under the weight of a load of books and lunch box with two ladies looking on. The mother of the uniformed child tells her companion, “It’s really cruel burdening the kids like this!