Dredging up the past

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 You see the sweet, cuddly depiction of Winston Churchill in 'The Crown' and almost forget his role in the Bengal famine of 1943 - a famine that occurred in the year when rain levels were higher that average, when Bengal produced enough to feed the entire region, and a famine that caused close to three million deaths.

 My father tells me stories of the famine. He tells me of the time when poor and hungry people stormed to the Park Hotel where the British and the elite were still wining and dining...but they stopped at the gates. Even under the provocation of fatal hunger, even as a mob, they wouldn't storm into place and claim food because it was not 'their place'. This word 'aukaat' in Hindi - I don't know what the closest word in English is for it - it's not caste or status...it's this unalterable place in life - that no matter what happens, you don't get to move out of your groove. Your children don't. Generations after you don't.

One can't blame Churchill. He was making all kinds of decisions to win the war, against all odds. But I think India and Indians have had issues with boundaries. I also think, not historically or anything, just from what I observe in my own work and in context of those I work with, there is an inverse relationship between your boundaries and your limits. If you have strict boundaries, you can be limitless in what you achieve or create. But if you have lax boundaries, you will erode under the crushing weight of constraints. Then you will necessarily limit what you can accomplish. 

One only needs to look at the schedule for a day and know this to be true.

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