Happy New Year

About new year partying

They are having a new year party in the basement of the apartment building. This reminds me of the parties we used to have in Nauroji Nagar. We would pool money and have party on this roof or that roof, or at a friend’s place where parents had gone away. After a few parties (as the kids grew up) we also started having cheap booze. I don’t know why at that time it used to feel like fun but if today someone asks me to attend such a party I’d be bored to death. My idea of fun has gone through a complete change.

A new year party is good if there are only 5-6 people who are very close to you. You can talk, eat, sing, listen to some good music, get drunk. Spending a once-a-year event in a place full of people gyrating wildly sounds drab and cliched. You can’t even hear anything and the music is so loud that it sounds like a cacophonous obfuscation. And most people are there because they have to be in a party, fearing that they are spending a very non-happening new year eve if they are not going to a party. And again, to be frank, some people attend parties just because they may bump into some prospective girlfriend or boyfriend — I mean, who knows? But then, some people like it for the sheer fun of it.

This time Alka and I are going to have the best new year eve of our lives — we’ll be spending it with Vasu. What better company can we get? I wouldn’t exchange it for anything else in this world. We’ll probably cut a cake as the clock strikes 12. At the dawn of a day we’ll be entering another wonderful year of aspirations and possibilities. We’ll sow many new dreams and construct their building blocks. It’ll be heavenly to be with both of them.

I don’t attach much importance to things like new year and such because I think all days are special days but such moments are good for appreciating people that are in our lives, and who really matter: they love you and you love them just for being there, for existing. You don’t have to be “someone” to qualify for their love. Every moment is a precious moment with them and this we realize when we are not with them or cannot go meet them. They are the party.

What’s happening to Rajdeep Sardesai?

They are about to broadcast an interview with Sonia Gandhi that Rajdeep Sardesai did for his recently launched news channel CNN-IBN. In the promos they say something like:

Rajdeep Sardesai: India’s most trusted journalist…

Sonia Gandhi: India’s most enigmatic politician…

I respect Rajdeep Sardesai as a TV journalist and I have no issue with the expression: India’s most trusted journalist. Although coming from his own channel this statement sounds a bit odd. After all he must be the one who approves all these things.

But Sonia Gandhi being India’s most enigmatic politician? I mean, come on, give me a break! You don’t have to stoop so low just to promote a program item. What’s so engimatic about her? Her every move is decided by the coterie, her every acttion is governed by the objectives of opportunism and the only thing she knows is how to use the Gandhi name prorperly.

If CNN-IBN goes the NDTV way then sadly it has no future.

The Da Vinci Code should have been a flop

A group of statisticians have been laboring for months to figure out what makes a top selling novel and according to their formula, surprisingly, The Da Vinci Code should have been a flop. According to this article in the Guardian Unlimited the formula showed all Charles Dickens novels mediocre accept for a lesser known Christmas story The Battle of Life.

The formula says it mostly depends on the title how the book fares. The statisticians, along with a few programmers, studied 54 years of the top sellers in the New York Times and the BBC’s Big Read poll. The researchers say:

Comparing these with a control group of less successful novels by the same authors, they found that the winning books had three common features; they had metaphorical, or figurative titles instead of literal ones; the first word was a pronoun, a verb, an adjective or a greeting; and their grammar patterns took the form either of a possessive case with a noun, or of an adjective and noun or of the words The … of …

The research was conducted to help customers of the UK wing of the self-publishing website, Lulu.com.

IIT Delhi prof is shot dead at IISc

Well, this was the headline in our “secular” newspaper The Asian Age for the news about a suspected LeT terrorist attack. They make it sound as if it was some personal, targeted attack on the professor and not a terrorist attack. What spineless guys they are as journalists. They can’t call a spade a spade. Like terrorists, they too find soft targets and don’t dare to use the right words for all the wrong actions being done by a particular section.

A way to lose a customer

That day Alka went to the Atta Market (a big market in NOIDA) to purchase a pack of pampers for Vasu. They’ve been advertising on TV that with every pack you get a free toy. I had specifically drawn Alka’s attention to the ad. But at the shop, when she asked for the toy, the shopkeeper said no such offer was associated with his current stock. Alka could easily make out that the sticker that declared the free toy had been removed from the pack. Alka’s nephew too had accompanied her. He noticed that when the shopkeeper’s assistant was bringing the toy from the backroom the shopkeeper indicated to him with his eyes that he should not show the toy.

Alka says she’ll never go to that shopkeeper again. The issue is not about the toy; it is the cheapness that the shopkeeper showed for that small toy. He might have saved a toy, but he has lost a customer forever, and I’m sure whenever someone talks about that shop, Alka will not fail to mention the incident. Stupid shopkeeper.

No witness protection program

When it comes to witnesses, very few people in the country take an initiative, and those who do often end up paying with their lives. A criminal named Satish Kumar is on the run after escaping from jail. He has 30 cases of murders and attempted murders on him. He has killed two witnesses who had testified against him in the past and he is out to kill more. The news report on TV said that he has killed two brothers for testifying against him and now that he has escaped, the third brother too is living under constant fear.

This is a reflection of the callous way our legal system works. Witnesses are anyway hard to find and when they come forward the police is unable to protect them. We should have a comprehensive witness protection program in the country if we really want people to come forward and stick out their necks. Things like relocation, identity change and monetary compensation should be integral parts of the program, and even the families should be eligible for total protection.

Genuine witnesses are an invaluable asset and it is the duty of the state to protect them. They spend crores of rupees (the exchequer’s money, of course) on the security of good-for-nothing politicians and when it comes to protecting people who want to help the law, there is a shortage of funds.

I think in this regard our legal system is either totally screwed up, or the implementers have no idea how to run it. People are not even ready to lodge the regular complaints to avoid police harassment. If you file a complaint against a criminal, before you know it, you may yourself end up either the next victim of the criminal, or the victim of the police.

So they were underestimating global warming till now

The permafrost in most areas of the Northern Hemisphere may melt by 2100, according to this news, unleashing irreversible global warming catastrophes. It’s funny when they say,

“If that much near-surface permafrost thaws, it could release considerable amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and that could amplify global warming,” said lead author David Lawrence, with the National Center for Atmospheric Research. “We could be underestimating the rate of global temperature increase.”

What’s there to underestimate? Environmentalists all over the globe have been crying horse that the greenhouse effect is an impending danger that is not centuries away. And even if it is, why do we want to leave an uninhabitable world to live. I hope by the time we turn the entire planet filthy our generations will be able to travel to other friendly planets.

Am I wrong, am I really wrong?

I’ve been tagged by Jagdeep (my sister) to list a few things I’ve been proven wrong about. Hmmm…OK, here they are:

• That I can ever be proven wrong
• That people who talk nicely to you actually care about you
• That teachers are never nasty
• That parents love you unconditionally
• That unconditional love doesn’t exist
• That I’ll finish a novel in 1998
• That nothing is impossible in this world
• That I’m good at chess

I think the list can go on and on.

Is this why Muslims restrict women so much?

There might be a reason behind the orthodox Muslim’s inveterate hatred towards a woman as an equal and wants her to be always in purdah, behind the walls.

In the history of Islam, perhaps no woman has been as widely (mis)interpreted as Zulaikha—the beautiful and perfidious wife of Potiphar in the story of Joseph. It was she who tried to seduce Joseph into the whirl of adultery and unbridled hedonism. It was she who upon being rejected by Joseph accused him of raping her, thus causing him to be incarcerated for years in the terrible dungeons of Potiphar’s regime.

Read the whole post here.