Reservation is certainly not an upper-caste versus lower-caste issue; it’s a political conspiracy to garner votes, to cover up goofy policies, and to keep the society divided. I don’t have an ideological problem with reservations as such, and I think all the disadvantaged sections of our society do need occasional push to maintain a level playing field. It is well known that the upper-caste Hindus have treated their lower-caste counterparts with disdain and contempt and this shame still flourishes in most spheres of our day-to-day lives. There are many villages in India where dalits are not allowed to draw water from the village wells and their children are not allowed to go to school. Recently an entire dalit village in Haryana was burned down by the upper-caste people and no strict action was taken by the administration. In MP or UP the noses of a few dalits were pierced and a rope was tethered through the holes to drive in the point that they were not very different from cattle. Later on they were forced to drink urine and eat excreta.
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Reading Salman Rushdie’s non-fiction literature is always a treat. I cannot say the same for his fiction work although his Midnight’s Children still remains amongst my all time favorites. In the morning I got to read his interesting account 
of the evolution of this marvelous novel. His beginning of the essay is quite encyclopaedic:
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The abduction of an Indian engineer by Taliban is both sad and infuriating. His only fault is that despite mortal danger he went to such a hostile place to earn money for his family. For centuries people from Afghanistan have been coming for trade (remember the famous ‘Kabuli wala’ story by Tagore?) to India and they have enjoyed warm welcome wherever in India they have gone. Normal Afghani people love Hindi films. This is the kind of warmth Taliban wants to breach by kidnapping Indians and asking them to leave Afghanistan immediately.
Again and again on TV they are broadcasting the heart-wrenching images of the bereaved family, as in most of the cases the abducted person is considered dead, and considering the kind of apathetic bureaucracy we have, it won’t be a surprise if the family thinks that there is a bleak chance of survival. Casting all religious and communal barriers aside, as a country we should all stand behind the family.
Alka today sent me this link about Saraswathy Ramaswamy who remains a true freedom fighter and a true Gandhian even now, and she is 106. I think I try to be too shallow and conceited when I call her “true Gandhian” because to be frank, I don’t know what the expression means or what it signifies and above all she doesn’t need such conferrals from people like me. Anyway, her sense of dignity and proud selflessness left me numb for at least a few seconds.
I know we have this tendency to put people on a pedestal who give up their lives for the “greater good” and go through immeasurable sufferings for the country and the society at large. We do it for selfish reasons because after all we need such people; we live off them. Great people sacrifice so that small people can live their complacent, normal lives and this has been happening since the time immemorial.
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A few weeks ago when they broadcast Pramod Mahajan’s interview for the first time I felt that he was among a few professional politicians we have in the country. He may have been, or still is, a “wheeler dealer”, but I think he is far better than people like Laloo, Mulayam or Modi, and deservedly he was being touted as a future prime minister. His shooting was both shocking, and disturbing.
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I’m very selective about who cuts my hair. When for the first time I got my hair cut (being a Sikh, I had long hair once) monthly visits to a barber became a hassle because I walk with crutches. My elder sister decided to become my hairdresser, and she cut my hair till she got married. Since she wasn’t trained in the art, my various hairstyles used to perplex many people. That was a squally period of my life and my hairstyle was the last thing that could bother me or the people who were extremely close to me.
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I know a lot has been written about blogging but I found an interesting article that talks about the evolution of blogging and its emerging social implications.
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Many a time I come across Rene Descartes’ famous quote: I think therefore I am. People often use it to make a statement, something like, “I exist because I think,” which is totally wrong, or if it not wrong, it is way off the true meaning.
I think therefore I am is an existential thought. It’s about the existence of the consciousness that makes us aware of ourselves. For instance, I only go as far as my awareness of myself, hence, I think therefore I am.. If I’m not aware of my existence, I don’t exist. The awareness of my being, my self-awareness of my being makes me exist as an individual.
In fact this thought, about the awareness of the self, has tormented countless philosophers and the conundrum got copious attention in the late 18th century and through the 19th century. I haven’t delved much into this subject. I’ve got a book by Sartre gifted to me by my sister titled: Being and Nothingness; but with my current knowledge of the subject, I found the book extremely hard to comprehend and if I remember correctly, I couldn’t even go beyond 10 pages.
I know many would say keep your nose out of things you don’t know, this strange talaq condition received an applaudable judgement from the Supreme Court. I have no issue with different communities having their own personal law boards — as long as the communities agree to it — but when we live in a democratic, secular country, there should be a bigger (Supreme Court, for instance) law and order inforcement agency to prevent these law boards from turning into tribal courts. The intellectuals from the community are already protesting against the verdict and calling it “interfaring” regarding the personal law board, the same proponents of these law boards scream equality and democracy when things are not in their favor, and turn exclusivist when things are in their favor. Here we call it doglapan (dualism).
Update: It just came to my mind, doesn’t the tripple-talaq thing stretch over a period of 3 months? According to the Shariat — in case the Muslim scholars are aware of it — in every talaq pronunciation there must be a gap of 1 month and I wonder why so conveniently they side-step such a big point. Why isn’t there a fatwa against a person who divorces his wife by saying ‘talaq’ in one go?
Here in front of me lies a newspaper supplement (we get The Asian Age that is gradually abandoning its communist hues and making overtures at the Delhi yuppy crowd) with a heading: “Celebs celebrate style, acquire snazzy phones”.
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