Vasu turned 1 this 30th (July, 2006). We had a small get together — our first such function as a family — and despite 40% of invitees not turning up at the last minute or not being present by the time she cut the cake, everything was great, blissful and fulfilling.
We got a 4-Kg butter-scotch cake that was so abundant that later on we had to distribute in the neighborhood.
This past year’s been amazing and believe me, it’s an understatement. I never knew I could have thousands of emotions for a baby. I mean, I’ve always been favorite among the kids and I too enjoy their proximity, but I’ve never been in awe. With Vasu it’s a totally different kind of feeling. First of all, she’s our flesh-and-blood. We still feel amazed when we see her taking unsteady steps and embarking upon her adventures in all the corners of the house; she signifies our love, trust and bonding for each other as two people deciding to live together and raise a family. Second, I love her for simply being the kind of individual she has already become. I cannot express it perhaps, but she already shares complex emotions with us and she has a deep sense of right and wrong. She loves to share, never misses a chance to render an affectionate pat, and her smiles are always spilling around the house. She’s our very own sunshine and I really hope, and I’ll make sure, that the clouds of real-world experiences don’t dim this warm glow.
The thought just came to my mind — New Delhi has this premier road in it dedicated to one of the most atrocious Muslim dictators India has ever had the misfortune to endure. Why dedicate an important road to such an obnoxious ruler? The person who carried out such a stupidity must be a psycho or something. This road should be immediately renamed. It’s disgusting, and so embarrassing.
Monica Ali’s Brick Lane almost got her a Booker back in 2003. The book is about a Bangladeshi woman sent to London for an arranged marriage. The book somehow slipped out of my mind even though I had made a mental note of reading it. There’s been a controversy going on regarding the filming of the novel and two writers — Salman Rushdie and Germaine Greer — are exchanging heated notes against and for the protests.
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Just read a heart-wrenching story of a Lebanese man who first lost an arm in an Israeli attack a few years ago and then lost both his legs in the recent Israeli attack on Lebanese settlements. The story that was published in our newspaper, The Asian Age, was extremely sad, and the sadder aspect was, such stories only perpetuate the sadness by presenting lopsided views to their readers, and consequently antagonizing more people and turning them into something other than normal, law-abiding citizens.
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It took 50 hours for the unrelenting army men to rescue Prince from a 57-feet deep boring hole that was only a feet wide, but these 50 hours highlighted a truth that remains unseen most of the time. People prayed for the 5-year-old in temples, gurudwaras, churches and mosques. Suddenly there was no religion. Suddenly there was no politics. And suddenly there was no caste, for, Prince is the son of a daily wage earner.
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I was interviewed by CNN-IBN yesterday (July 18, 2006). You can view the video here.
The latest The Airtel executive just told me that the IP address of the blocked Blogger does not appear on their list of blocked IP addresses. But then he added the IP address does show up in some section but its appearance should not stop the blogs from appearing. I wonder what it means.
The censorship, in the name of a “controlled flow of information” has finally hit the Indian blogging shores. Most of the ISPs due to a suspected directive from the Ministry of Communication have blocked all the blogs belonging to the popular blog hosting website Blogger.com. It’s really insulting that we’ve been pushed in the category of oppressive countries like Pakistan, China, Saudi Arabia, etc. Even if it has been done for security reasons, the government could have just banned the errant blogs.
Anyway, the government must be shown that its dictatorial, emergency-days type censorship cannot work in the connected times. How can all of a sudden some big uncle wake up one morning and decide what we can read and what not? Even if some terror groups are using blogs to communicate to each other, we’re just proving to the world how dumb and how vulnerable we are: our right to information is throttled by the government just because it is unable to capture the real perpetrators. It’s a sign of deep frustration.
Censorship does more harm than good, no matter how nasty the censored content appears to a certain section. Censorship conveys the notion that we are scared of a thought, an opinion, an ideology, and our citizens are not mentally fit to weed out undesired ideas. Censorship also stops us from knowing what sort of thinking people are indulging in nowadays. Whatever exists in the society in the form of graphic or written expressions is an indication of what a certain group of people thinks. Reading and viewing their stuff gives us an idea of what we DON’T want, and hence, we are better prepared when decisive forces raise their heads — we’re not caught off-guard.
In a recent article, perhaps written by Kuldip Nair (I cannot recall) lamented the fact that most of the current bureaucrats and ministers in the current government were active in the Emergency days and hence, they are not particularly averse to the ideas of draconian law enforcements. We should make sure they get the right message this time — that you cannot just go on bullying people at your own whim.
A good thing about the bloggers is that they are a vocal lot, and unlike the conventional print and electronic media, they stand united against the government’s repressive drive. To stop the bloggers from expressing themselves, the government will have to bring down the Internet itself. Blogging has given a voice to the common citizen. One no longer has to go somewhere to vociferate protest and express opinions; you can do all this using your keyboard. I think this is where in actuality this government has a problem. A silent class is all of a sudden able to establish a communication network where lots of people can communicate with lots of other people in real time. Up till now the government has been thriving on the cesspool of rampant ignorance and awareness gap. Bloggers ask uncomfortable questions and demand straightforward answers which the inept government officials cannot provide. On blogs you find unadulterated, inchoate thoughts. There are no editors waiting to bowdlerize the posts. On blogs you find exactly what the bloggers want to say, in their own language. So the best solution they can come up with is, stop people from voicing their opinions.
A report in Business Standard says:
The sites that were asked to be blocked include hindunity.og and exposingtheleft.blogspot.com.
At least it gives a rough idea of who all must be involved in getting the blogs and websites blocked.
I’m listing here a few websites you can use to access the blocked blogs. If you are hosting your blog on an independent, non-blogger server, please put this information there so that in case they start blocking individual websites, at least the information remains available through other websites.
Websites that can help you access blocked websites
Blogs following up the issue
Media Links
In this section I’ll be covering the coverage this controversy is getting in the mainstream media or some media other than the blogs.
I was just informed by Mridula (If you can access the website) that some ISPs such as MTNL, Spectranet etc. are blocking Blogger.com websites/blogs. The government’s vicious dragnet — if it is true by any wild chance — hasn’t reached our ISP yet so I can see the blogs. I fail to understand what the government stands to achieve by blocking blogs. Even if some blogs might be spreading rumours and hate messages in the wake of the recent Mumbai blasts, there are scores of other bloggers who have been working day in and day out to put on their blogs as much helpful information as possible — for instance Mumbai Help — and spreading around messages of peace and communal harmony. I hope this is not true.
One article in our newspaper — The Asian Age — opined that the recent serial blasts in Mumbia were the cumulative outcome of the vicious politics being played in the country in general and in Mumbia in particular. The author has first tried to link the “backlash” to the Shiv Sena’s inflamatory campaigns targeting the Muslim community, and then she has stretched the chronology right till the Babri Masjid demolition. Whereas, the actions of Shiv Sena and the tragic demolition cannot be condoned, presenting them as reasons for terrorist strikes is not only outright stupid, it also insults the citizens of this country who are trying to grapple with a monumental tragedy. We cannot rout-out a problem without going into the root-cause, of course, but attributing such barbaric acts to one reason or another justifies these acts in the eyes of at least a few. Terrorism can strike you just for being there, there in this world where there are always people who try to give a human face to diabolical acts. If you really want to know what terrorism is, go ask a family who has lost a bread winner or who has been rendered physically challenged for the rest of his or her life because of the so called “backlash”.
Terrorism of this kind is not driven by reason; it is driven by ideology — ideology to destroy everything that represents thoughts and ideas other than those espoused by a certain community. If you don’t think in a particular manner, you deserve destruction. It is as simple as that. Even if the mosque hadn’t been destroyed, even if the Shiv Sena hadn’t existed, these blasts would have occurred because they are not a backlash, they are a furthering of an ideology. An ideology doesn’t wait for reasons.
We’ll never be able to deal with terrorism if all the time we are trying to attach a human face to it. The terrorists only understand the language of destruction, and unless you don’t talk to them in a language they understand, you can expect no conducive communication. That’s why they don’t talk and negotiate, that’s why they carry out violent acts. There are no ifs and buts and perhaps and althoughs in terrorism.
To an extent I agree that terrorism, at least in India, is fomented by the opportunistic parties in India and most who play crucial roles in terrorist strikes are the locals, unlike in the West, they should be dealt with strictly. And this strictness will only pay if there is a general sense of justice in the country, like, do something undemocratic, and action shall be taken against you, whether you are a Hindu, a Muslim, a Yadav, a Sikh, a Jat, or a monkey. There should be no scope for discrimination.
People like Modi, Mulayam, Laloo, Bal Thakeray etc. too are a big part of the problem. They flare up communal tensions all the time and since most of the local terrorists in India have born the brunt of communal tension one time or another, this adds to the whole conflagration. In Maharashtra and Gujarat Modi and Thakery encourage Hindu rioters and in UP and Bihar Mulayam and Laloo support the fanatical maulanas. Laloo Yadav was so desperate to woo the Muslim votes that he used to move around during the elections with an Ossama-lookalike. It is tragic that one is supposed to “appeal” to the Muslim community by looking like a notorious terrorist.
If our government, at least in India, is really interested in tackling the problem then all the people mentioned above need to be dis-empowered at the earliest. This will solve 70% of the problem within the country. Second, the Muslim community needs to be proactive in its stand. They only show their secular side when they are threatened by a “majority reaction”. I agree that why should they explain every terrorist strike happening in the country and in the world? But an unavoidable fact is, most of the terrorists originate from their community. So there is certainly something fundamentally flawed in their thinking and value system. They have to stop glorifying the sundry terrorists and the underworld dons. They should decide something like, “Let the world be dammed, but there are going to be no terrorists amidst our localities.” They have to denounce the archaic madarsas and embrace the modern education system so that their children can be a part of the world economy and consequently stay away from destructive influences. They should not tolerate people in their community — this also holds true for Hindus — who flare up needless communal passions.
To achieve something tangible, a sense of fairness must prevail in the country, backed with strict actions against the terrorist. It’s a two-pronged process. Terrorists should be crushed like insects (no, I don’t mean insects should be needlessly crushed) but at the same time we should also tackle with the unguent socio-political soil that gives them the ground to grow.
I’m posting the updates on Mumbai blasts in this post itself.
[The Mumbai blasts] [How gruesome can it get?] [Playing into the terrorists’ hands] [General holiday, instead of bandh] [Jamming the phones] [Mumbai-Dubai connections?] [More links]
COOPER HOSPITAL: 26207254, 26207256
HINDUJA HOSPITAL: 24451515, 24452222
Mumbai has again been rocked by bomb blasts. There were 8 7 blasts in less then 11 minutes; more than 175 190 people have died as of now. People near the blast sites have displayed exceptional courage trying to help the survivors. The images I’m seeing on TV are really ghastly. People have been blown to pieces and their shreds stuck in the debris. I hope no communal flare-ups happen in the wake of these gruesome blasts, because this was the sole purpose of these blasts. Interestingly, deservedly, the Mumbai people are requesting politicians to stay away from the city, as no administrative help was available even after an hour. All the time the train passengers and the locals rushed the injured to various hospitals. All the politicians appearing on various TV channels are sounding as clueless as it can be possible. When a TV reporter asked the Maharashtra CM what information the government had regarding the blasts, the gem he presented was, “The only information we have got right now is that they were bomb blasts.” So impressive! The country is so safe now.
How gruesome can it get?
I’ve been editing this post since yesterday evening (July 11, 2006)
As the comment left by Mridula, she is raising the issue (along with links from some other blogs) on the kind of footage being broadcast on the Indian “national” channels. I’m putting national in quotes because they are supposed to be “reputed” channels. They are tripping over each other trying to show images and small video clips sent to them by what they call the “citizen journalists” and they are in such a hurry to show the pictures that even as known a journalist as Barkha Datt on NDTV “apologized” that they didn’t have enough time to edit the shocking pictures and video clips. The justification, as one Aajtak journalist put it, is that the destructive forces must see what kind of carnage they have orchestrated. Well, hello! That was there purpose, and the more gruesome images you beam, the more satisfaction and sense of achievement they get. They hadn’t placed those bombs to stop your hiccups dammit.
Commercialization too was of the crass type. There were dead bodies, mutilated bodies, and underneath you could see advertisement captions from underwear sellers and property builders and private educational institutes. I understand that advertising revenue is something that cannot be shrugged away, but at least they can keep those pyrotechnic images blocked while they show people dealing with tragedies.
Playing into the terrorists’ hands
The Shiv Sena — as you can’t expect anything decent from these lampoons — has declared a bandh in protest. This is exactly the kind of effect the terrorists want. Sometimes I feel most the political parties work in tandem with terrorist organizations and that’s why most of the time they are acting so irresponsibly.
General holiday, instead of bandh
There must have been 100s of people who couldn’t reach home yesterday. Instead of the proposed bandh the government can declare a general holiday so that people can come to terms with the massive tragedy. I think even those people who have not been directly affected by the blasts would like to spend a quiet day with their loved ones and be thankful about being alive and safe in these capricious, terror-ridden times. This holiday can also be used to leash the divisive forces like the Shiv Sena.
Jamming the phones
I think this was a very stupid decision taken by the Mumbai police (which the Mumbai commissioner categorically denied). They said it was done so that people could not spread rumours. The immediate casualty was communication. Just imagine, when it was the really real time to make use of landline and cell phones, they were stopped from working. A functional communication setup is the biggest asset a city has during large-scale catastrophes. People couldn’t even tell their loved ones whether they were alive or dead, injured or not injured. I think when things settle down a bit, strong action should be taken against people who took this decision. Rumours generally spread by word-of-mouth.
Mumbai-Dubai connections?
It was recently declared on India TV that immediately after the blasts calls were made to Pakistan and Dubai. So much for Musharraf’s commisserations.
More links
Every research endeavour needs funds. Money is needed at every stage of a path-breaking research and this money is mostly provided by universities, governments, charitable funds and private companies. Does this influence the outcome of the research? I think in some cases it does and in some cases it doesn’t. It depends on what is the motive of the funding.
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