Violinist in the Metro !!

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats averaged $100.

Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?


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The detailed article on this Washington Post experiment carried out at L' Enfant Plaza on January 12, 2007 can be found at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Two quotes from the long article--

"For many of us, the explosion in technology has perversely limited, not expanded, our exposure to new experiences. Increasingly, we get our news from sources that think as we already do. And with iPods, we hear what we already know; we program our own playlists."

"Couple of years ago, a homeless guy died right there. He just lay down there and died. The police came, an ambulance came, and no one even stopped to see or slowed down to look."People walk up the escalator, they look straight ahead. Mind your own business, eyes forward. Everyone is stressed. Do you know what I mean?"

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What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

-- from Leisure, by W.H. Davies

How Poor Are We ??

(from an email I received)

One day, the father of a very wealthy family took his son on a trip to the country with the express purpose of showing him how poor people live.


They spent a couple of days and nights on the farm of what would be considered a very poor family.

On their return from their trip, the father asked his son, 'How was the trip?'

'It was great, Dad.'

'Did you see how poor people live?' the father asked.

'Oh yeah,' said the son. 'So, tell me, what did you learn from the trip?' asked the father

The son answered:
'I saw that we have one dog and they had four.

We have a pool that reaches to the middle of our garden and they have a creek that has no end.

We have imported lanterns in our garden and they have the stars at night.

Our patio reaches to the front yard and they have the whole horizon.

We have a small piece of land to live on and they have fields that go beyond our sight.

We have servants who serve us, but they serve others.

We buy our food, but they grow theirs.

We have walls around our property to protect us, they have friends to protect them.'


The boy's father was speechless.

Then his son added, 'Thanks Dad for showing me how poor we are.'


Isn't perspective a wonderful thing?

Makes you wonder what would happen if we all gave thanks for everything we have, instead of worrying about what we don't have.

Appreciate every single thing you have.

SEZ who? Not the farmers..

An article from "Down To Earth" magazine (CSE - India) by Nidhi Jamwal

First public audit of special economic zones in Maharashtra kickstarts a nation-wide effort

“Zameen aamcha hakkachi,
naahi konachya baapa chi ”
(This land is ours, not somebody else’s)

On September 15, this slogan rent the air of Div village, 100 km from Mumbai. Over 300 farmers from eight districts of Maharashtra met at Div in Raigad district to participate in the first-ever public audit of special economic zones (sezs). A group of non-profits initiated the public audit.

The message was: farmers would not give away their land to industry or government for sezs. “The government can take my life, but not my land,” said Dhakibai Thakur, 60-year-old farmer from Raigad’s Vadhav village. She made this clear to a panel—comprising former bureaucrats, academics, journalists, industrialists—conducting the audit.

“The idea behind the audit is to take people’s voice to the government and question the validity of the sez Act,” said Aruna Roy, founder of the non-profit Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan. “Maharashtra’s audit is a beginning. Similar audits will be carried out in other states,” she warned.


Brains behind the initiative

In July this year, the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sanghatan, the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (tiss) in Mumbai, National Centre for Advocacy Studies in Pune and others initiated plans. The organizations identified and gave affected villagers questionnaires seeking their opinion on the sez in their area and how it affected their lives.

“The questionnaire was in Marathi. If a farmer was illiterate, volunteers assisted. Discussions were held and reports compiled. Villagers presented the reports to the panel at Div,” said Surekha Dalvi, advocate and land rights activist involved in planning the public audit.

Maharashtra has the largest number of sezs approved in the country—202—and was the groups’ obvious choice for the first audit. The decision to meet in Raigad was symbolic. “Farmers here have put up a bold front in the past and are opposing Reliance Group’s Mumbai sez Ltd,” said Roy. “It was because of their stiff resistance the state held a referendum on sez. Though 96 per cent villagers voted against the sez, the government has not made the results public,” she added. (See ‘Our voice’, Down To Earth, October 15, 2008).

At the audit, farmers called sezs a suicide pact. A group from Nagpur presented their case against mihan ( Multi-modal International Hub Airport at Nagpur) sez. “The project will consume 14 villages’ land—4,025 hectare. Half the land is acquired and lying vacant,” said Babaji Dawre of Shivagaon village. “The land acquired was fertile. Since 2000, over a million orange trees have been cut down,” said Dawre whose village would be used for the airstrip. “The government can build the airstrip over our dead bodies,” he added. The airstrip would also mean the end of a robust milk economy of Shivagaon, which earns Rs 25-29 crore annually.

Farmer groups from Nashik and Pune narrated similar stories of losses, meagre compensations and cheating. A farmer from Amravati district alleged the Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation had acquired land from farmers on the pretext of ‘public good’ and given it to private companies for sezs.

“The situation is grim. The government must pause and ponder,” said Swapna Banerjee-Guha, professor at tiss, after hearing out farmers at the day-long audit. “We will compile our report and release it soon,” he said.

Audits will next be organized in Goa, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Orissa and West Bengal. Activists and farmers will then go to Delhi and demand dismissal of sezs. “We do not want sezs pushed from one district to the other. People’s concerns are the same across the country,” said Ulka Mahajan of sez -Virodhi Sangharsh Samiti, Raigad.