Why can’t the Pataudi family leave the poor animals alone? According to this, Pataudi, along with his wife, the yesteryears film actress Sharmila Tagore, hunted down some 100 migratory birds in Kashmir’s Hokersar wetland in 1997. The official version was that they had taken permission. Nobody knows how they obtained the permission, and what if even they got the permission from some deranged forest ministry official? Does it justify the killings? What if someone shoots them for fun?
As everybody knows, a few years ago their son was apprehended and nearly killed by the local tribals for killing the black buck. The Pataudi clan it seems has vowed to prove how demonic they can be while treating the country’s fauna and especially the endangered species. In order to save the poor animals from this familial menace, the entire family should be put behind bars, and if possible, forever.
I agree with this post to an extent that intellectuals (if you may call her that) like Arundhati Roy are interminably lamenting this thing or that without any positive contribution. They constantly try to be the conscience pricks of the society. They thrive on the darker perceptions and sow the seeds of their success on the biased soil of political-correctness.
But then some of what she says actually makes sense, for instance, here she says:
“…it is almost as if the light is shining so brightly that you do not notice the darkness,” she said. “There is no understanding whatsoever of what price is being paid by the rivers and mountains and irrigation and ground water, there is no questioning of that because we are on a roll.”
She rightly says that environment in India is alarmingly being damaged by reckless materialism. We are too self-obsessed for our own good and this way one day there will be left no place to be “in” and be “cool” and “arrive somewhere”. We all know big dams harm the ecosystems but still there are no mass protests in the urban areas (I think the rural folks are more progressive in this regard)
In the article linked above she asks how we can flaunt mobile phones when hundreds of people regularly die of hunger. Idealistically, I too concur, but realistically, I don’t. Just because people are dying of hunger doesn’t make my phone look bad and I don’t feel guilty of having a mobile phone. Yes, I need some enlightenment on it. If my mobile phone is causing hunger (in the collective sense) then I can definitely change my stance. For instance, I believe that if I don’t eat meat, somewhere it’s going to affect some remote animal. But then, if I didn’t exist, the air would have been slightly purer.
Progress takes its toll and we have to take the good with the bad. Not all progress is bad and in fact, many pioneering ways are constantly being devised to protect the environment. Sadly, after hundred bad steps, we take one good step. So people like Ms. Roy are needed to constantly poke at the society and keep it awake towards the need to take care of our planet, its species and its myriad ecosystems.
This, along with words like badmash, chaddie, etc. have been included in the new edition of the Collins English Dictionary. I wonder why these words are termed under the coinage “Hinglish” because most are Arabic words.
I went to this link via India Uncut. I’m not a good commentator of politics, but I discussed this Advani affair with Alka and she said, rightly, that Advani is preparing to be the PM. The way he had been projected, by his own actions and statements of course, as a hardliner, it would have been extremely difficult for him to even be considered for the post in our secularly inclined country. I don’t know much about Jinnah and his ideological bent of mind, but he couldn’t surely be less secular than the Congress loonies who claim that their party made huge sacrifices during the freedom struggle. They should get back to the real history books to realize that it was not the Congress (I) that made the sacrifices. It was a different Congress.
What I know is, it was the Congress that pushed Jinnah over the edge and forced him to insist on a separate nation for the Muslims. Hadn’t the Congress leadership, especially Nehru, been so intransigent, perhaps there wouldn’t have been a Pakistan in the first place.
Coming back to Advani, he has hit two birds (I don’t like this phrase and I hope Patuadi doesn’t get ideas from it) with a single stone. He has not only successfully portrayed himself as a freethinking (secular or no secular) statesman, he has also conveyed to the Pakistanis that we take Pakistan as a legitimate, sad, but a legitimate reality and now it is time to be realistic and move forward. I think a secular Jinnah is much, much more preferable to India than the communal mullahs and generals. And talking about birds and stones, he might have killed three birds. He’ll make loonies like Togadia eat their own words and just might put a leash on the theatricalities of the RSS that is becoming a perpetual pain in the BJP’s ass.
Interestingly, cutting across the party lines, there are voices of protest raising from all quarters. I read Jyoti Basu saying that Advani had twisted the history of the nation by heaping praises upon Jinnah. Ambika Soni said nobody could know the history better than the Congress because they have made the biggest “sacrifices” for the country and they certainly can’t digest Jinnah as a secular. Well, at least somewhere the Congress and the RSS have a common ground.
The recent incident of the Nawab of Pataudi being caught red handed with one dead black buck and two rabbits shouldn’t come as a surprise. This family has this strange tendency to hunt for fun. I don’t feel comfortable mentioning words like “this family” but a few years ago the junior Pataudi was caught hunting the unfortunate deer along with Salman Khan, Tabbu and Sonali Bendre. These damsels gleefully clapped while the animals fell down. Recently, as Alka told me, Sharmila Tagore (Pataudi’s wife) was invited to a book-release function. The subject of the book was forest conservation. In her speech she talked about how much she enjoys hunting. I don’t know how much of it is true, but even if it true by an iota, how dumb can one be?!
I don’t understand what fun there can be killing an animal. The animal is simply spending a blissful life in the wilderness with its family. You go there like a deranged psychopath and hunt the hapless creature down. If you enjoy this, then you should enjoy a blissful life in an asylum.
There is a provision of a 7-year imprisonment if he is proven guilty, but of course we always have this big “if” gawking at us. He has poached during a favorable government — the Congress. By all probability he is going to be saved. If nothing else, I think this incident should be made known to as many people as possible.
Just imagine how strong their sense of immunity is. Media is agog with animal conservation related issues, especially in the wake of the vanishing Sariska tigers and every small incident gets full-blown coverage. Still these guys had the chutzpah of poaching the protected animals. Either Pataudi is still wallowing in the vestigial superfluity of the nawabs or he is totally devoid of sense.
Whatever it is, sadly, influential people like these roam in the society circles and people aspire to be like them. They are demons in the garbs of angels.
The Elder Zosima says in The Brothers Karamazov:
In construing freedom as the multiplication and speedy satisfaction of needs, they distort their own nature, for they engender within themselves many senseless and stupid desires, habits and most absurd inventions. They live solely for envy, for love of the flesh and for self-conceit. To have dinners, horses and carriages, rank, and attendants who are slaves is already considered such a necessity that they will even sacrifice their lives, their honour and philanthropy in order to satisfy that necessity, and will even kill themselves if they cannot do so.
This has held true for ages, and in more amplified manner, these days. One is known by the possessions and connections one can boast of. Have a certain car, you’ve arrived; wear designer clothes, you’re famous; use a certain gadget, you command respect; make fun of other, you’re smart. It seems nothing depends on the individual, the self; every art, every obedience, every admiration can be indirectly acquired by buying things.
Further, Elder Zosima says:
Among those who are not rich we see the same thing, and among the poor envy and frustration of needs are at present dulled by drunkenness. But soon in place of alcohol it will be blood upon which they grow intoxicated — to that they are being led.
They have already been led to that “bloody intoxication”. The rising trend of lifestyle related crimes firmly indicates that the poor want to imitate the rich, and of course since they don’t have the means, they are ready to steal and murder. I don’t blame the lifestyle of the rich, for they can do whatever they want to do. The problem arises when this lifestyle is portrayed as the only interpretation of meaningful living. There are no alternate ideologies being promulgated by the society. Get rich, get rich, and you are successful, and if you are not rich, then you’re not worthy of any respect. Again, there is nothing wrong in being rich. But hard work and ingenuity should beget this richness, not treachery and corruption. The end shouldn’t always justify the means.
In a thought-provoking post Hasmita Chander has listed the ordeals new mothers, and concurrently, all the physically challenged people, have to go through if they simply decide to go and do things that the “normal” world does as a routine: shopping. Hasmita recently had a baby and she has to carry around the baby, and whenever there are stairs (and these grotesque stairs galore everywhere) she has to face immense difficulty.
I can very well relate to that, especially the last segment where she says about India:
This is a country that caters only to the young, the fit, the clever, and preferably, the male.
This is the galling difference between a developed society and a primitive society. Technologically, our society has advanced (we want all the good things, don’t we?), but mentally, we live in the dark ages. I understand that the daily struggles of a developing society are far greater compared to those of a developed society, but still, unless all the segments of the society are treated on an equal footing, the society as a whole cannot move forward.
Whereas in Connaught Place, New Delhi, there are a few shops where you don’t encounter stairs (although some parts of even those shops are only accessible by stairs), I was aghast when I visited the Atta Market in NOIDA, where you have to climb steps in order to enter any shop. Some shops don’t even have stairs. Recently I had to purchase a musical instrument (which I didn’t purchase anyway due to its inferior quality) from a shop in Defence Colony. Those guys had a make-shift iron staircase that shakes when you use it. Even able-bodied can be turned disabled in a jiffy if they don’t use those stair with utmost care.
A few years ago I attended an orientation workshop where a Japanese architect (a very attractive female sporting a ThinkPad) gave a presentation on how the area around the Central Secretariat (or is it Sectariate?) could be made accessible to the disabled. Even the disabled representing the government agencies didn’t find her recommendations appealing because people don’t follow rules in India. Take for instance building lower pavements (you really need steps to climb these pavements). The road authorities say they have to lay higher pavements to prevent two-wheelers and cycles from plying on them during traffic jams, and this is so true. The moment there is a traffic jam, you see vehicles running on the pavement. And this is when they are so high.
Once when we gave a presentation to the Delhi School of Architecture students, many of them said they prefer helical stairs because they found ramps ugly and they occupy lots of stairs. This is the level of awareness in the prestigious school that teaches students to build the edifices of civilization.
Compared to this, the western society (our favorite bashing point) has well laid out rules regarding the accessibility of present and future buildings. Their laws are very strict. You cannot construct a public building (including shops and restaurants) there if the physically challenged cannot access it. Of course when these same people go to other countries they follow the rules of those countries. Once I visited the American embassy in Delhi: there are more than twenty stairs before you can even reach the reception area. Similarly, how many McDonald outlets in India can you think of that can be accessed by wheelchair users?
It’s high time all the people who face barrier-based discrimination came forward and started protesting against such obstructive places. We need lower pavements. Why not heavily fine the motorists if they violate the space? We need ramps. Why not give extra incentives (for instance, funding the construction of the ramp by the government) to offices and shops that do not want to spend extra on ramps and hydraulic lifts? There can be plenty of solutions if there is a firm resolve to find them.
I‘ve been book-Tagged by Sunil Laxman of balancing life. Although I’ve been occupied by my inexorable software woes plus deadlines, I’ve been morbidly (Garcia says you shouldn’t use the “ly??? adjective often) observing this book-tagging frenzy. It seemed the more popular you are, the more people tag you. I was on the verge of vociferating: Oh, I’m so lonely, nobody tags me! when Sunil appeared from the pastures of salvation and tagged me :-). I’ve already been writing about my meagre bibliophilism, but for the sake of the fraternity, here it goes:
The number of books I have
Personally? Not more than ten. In the cabinet adjacent to the chair from where I work, there are roughly 100 odd books, but they have been brought/bought by either my wife or my sister. We got the cabinet for the big encyclopaedia and the monthly edition of National Geographic. When we saw lots of space still unoccupied, we put our books there.
On some literary blogs I read people have more than 4000 books, or they have had to shift to bigger houses to accommodate their mounting collections. How much money they must have! I mean, buying or renting bigger houses to place books is beyond my current need and capability. I don’t think I’ll ever have that many books with me even if I can afford them.
The book I’m currently reading
The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoyevsky. Although I’d like to write in my own way, but if I ever decide to emulate an author, by all means it’ll be Fyodor Dostoyevsky. This book is hard to read, at least for me, with it’s interminable religious discourses. I never skip a page, I even read the prefaces and the introductions when I start reading the book. So reading all those pages talking about religious morality is a bit tedious. I’m reading those pages just because they’ve been written by Dostoyevsky.
Last book I bought
Milan Kundera’s The Joke. It’s one of the most impressive and literary books I’ve ever read (not that I’ve read many books). I wish I had read it a long time back. I plan to read it again some day.
Last book I read
Living To Tell The Tale by Gabriel García Márquez. I wrote it’s review here.
Five books that have meant a lot to me
- One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. I know, this is everybody’s favorite, but then, there’s no escaping from it. I have read it four times: once as a reader, and thrice as a learning writer.
- Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy. One of the saddest books I’ve read by my all time favorite author. It tells you how your only mental fragilities can utterly destroy your aspirations. A beautifully written book.
- Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Again, I first read this book as a reader and then as a learning writer. An exceptional book that takes you to the crux of Dostoyevsky’s genius.
- Bahut Din Huye a collection of short stories in Hindi. It’s one of the first books that I read and all its stories clung to my reminiscences for a long, long time. I must find it, if it is still in our house.
- The Castle by Franz Kafka. This is an exceptional book in the sense that I never completed reading it. I have always wanted to read it because of its epic depiction of ordinary helplessness. If you want to get the true essence of Kafkaesque writing, you must read this book (apart from reading The Metamorphosis).
Actually I have many more books to add to this list, for instance, To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee, Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Dafoe, and Nemesis by Agatha Christie, but since they say it only has to be five book, so be it.
Oh, now the tagging part: not many people are left, but I can include the following if they haven’t already been tagged:
Ok, ok, I know there are only 4, but most I’d like to include have already been tagged.
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