One of the killers of Manjunath was awarded the death sentence and everybody is hailing it as “justice for Manjunath”. I did a quick search on Google blogs and most of the headings read something like “Manjunath gets justice”. What justice, I ask? Manjunath is dead. If there is some justice, it is for his parents, his friends, and for all those people who wanted to see the guilty punished. Yes, if he could be brought back to life, if he could resume doing whatever he wanted to do in life, then it would have certainly been justice to him.
Yesterday someone said on TV that it’ll send a strong signal that go ahead, do your work and the system is there to protect you. I found this statement really silly. Was the person trying tell that Manjunath has been “protected”? Is it of any value to me if my murderers get some punishment after I’m dead? Can I call it protection?
No. Protection is, that I can work, I can take a stand, and still I and my family can remain alive and function. This is what I call protection and unless this happens, everything else doesn’t really count.
Quick note: I don’t mean to say the fight put up by Manjunath’s friends, well-wishers and the family is of no consequence. While the mainstream media slept, it were the bloggers who initially raised the issue. We need lots of such movements because it’ll yank away the sense of impunity many enjoy here. It’ll be a deterrent in its own little sense and if there is a sequence of such concerted movements a message will certainly be sent to the wannabe murderers that escaping the gallows won’t be easier anymore — the world is well-connected now and mass movements can be orchestrated even from the bedrooms.
But by the end of the day, everything is like, locking the stable after the horses have bolted.
I know, I might sound overly cynical, but to me, murder, or any kind of physical damage, is the ultimate injustice and no justice can undo the harm. Even if all were awarded the death sentence, Manjunath would have still been dead. Therefore, if one really wants the so-called justice, this should just be taken as a beginning to a long-winded struggle to form a society where someone like Manjunath cannot be murdered as easily as he was. There should be a zero-tolerance policy towards offenders and those who flaunt the law. Life in our country should get the respect it deserves.
Yesterday they were also showing on TV how brutally the street dogs in south are being killed. One person tied a thin cable around a dog’s neck, swirled the dog around several times in the air and then smashed the poor animal against the rocks. Even if you are given the orders to kill the dog, is it the way? If you can kill a dog like that, how far away can you remain from killing a human being, may be with a little less pain? And on top of that, if most of the civilians can justify or tolerate such actions, we live in a scary society, like in a horror movie (The Dawn of the Dead, or something of that sort) where everybody turns into a zombie. This is symptomatic of the rot that has dug its roots very deep into our subconscious, and this rot gives a sense of security to people like Manjunath’s murderers. Sooner or later we’ll have to realize that all our actions and inactions are interconnected. And some day we are all going to fall prey to our own actions and inactions.
I feel writing non-fiction comes easier to me than writing fiction. I know this for sure because I regularly get paid to write commercial/non-fiction content and of late almost all the clients seem to be quite happy. Sometimes I write 1000 words in just 30 minutes (I’m not talking about typing speed). On the other hand it takes me sometimes ages to write even 300 words of fiction. I’m happy about my comfort with non-fiction, but my unease with fiction saddens me.
Writing fiction is a totally different ball game. Of late I’m discovering it’s not about how well you can write, it’s about what you can write. I’ve been overly obsessive about improving my writing skills and this often acts as a hindrance. I think writing well is no big deal. It’s like having a high-quality flute but not being able to play it. A skilled flutist can evoke magic even with a hand-made, bamboo flute.
I got this feeling while doing riyaz (singing practice) in the morning. I try to practice extremely low and high scales and I can’t even say saregama properly. Whereas practicing higher and lower scales is essential for making the vocal chords strong and flexible, the real art exists in reciting shudh swaras (pure notes). From now onwards I’ll focus more on purity and less on flexibility and strength while not ignoring these attributes.
Similarly, I’m planning to focus less on improving my writing and more on actual writing because I think I know all the words I need to articulate what I want to. I can mould sentences in whichever way I want. The only thing that lacks is imagination. And the flora of imagination doesn’t grow on barren land. You have to make the land ready. You have to till it, you have to water it, you have to make it germ-free — what I’m trying to say is, due to the neglect my thoughts have become hard rocks. Hard rocks are good for creating structures (non-fiction), but healthy plants (fiction) cannot grow on them. Tell me to write a 300-word corporate website page and I’ll create a killer copy facilely, but tell me to conjure up a fancy and my brain falls down belly-up. The saving grace is I know what are the factors contributing to this stiffness of imagination.
With all this communist/CPI(M)/secularists crap going on, this quote from Friedrich Nietzsche sounds quite apt:
They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.
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I stopped reading The Asian Age not because the content was inferior but because we (Alka and I) got sick of the blatant intellectual hypocrisy they thrust upon their readers. The Pioneer too is just a shade better, but at least it is: although it is very lenient about what the BJP and its various lunatic brigades do and very harsh about what the Congress and the Left perpetrates, it does not publish the lopsided opinions. Sadly, no matter what newspaper you read and no matter what news channel you watch, everything is about this or that propaganda. Nobody talks about things for their social, economic, religious or environmental significance. Everything is about politics and confabulated ideologies.
We got the Tata Sky connection yesterday and since all the channels are remarkably clear (they were intolerable prior to this) I decided to watch We The People. It’s a weekly program hosted by Barkha Dutt. They pick a “burning issue”, invite a few panelists and an audience, and then, at least of now, “try” to have a fair debate. Once it used to be my favorite program and to an extent she used to be one of my favorite TV journalists. Then, I won’t say she changed, but rather, the background changed and she, along with many of her fellow journalists and intellectuals, turned from fearless crusaders to crony journalists that operate upon the fringes of absurdity. When she seemed like a crusader, it was the BJP-supported NDA government and when the government changed, it was not a crusade, but an agenda.
For instance, all this noise being raised over the Nandigram killings, she said, is nothing but political opportunism; it’s hypocritical on the parts of all the political parties and the NGOs that are protesting against the ruthless attack on the villagers trying to save their farm land. She said, no party is clean, and they all have their skeletons to hide, and hence, the Left shouldn’t be attacked exclusively. She was asking the panelist from the Left “polite” questions but downright underplaying the opinions of the other panelists who happened to be contradicting the views of the host and the communist panelist. Fine, she has all the right to be polite and civil, but just change the person from a communist to a, say, BJP person. Then all of a sudden her true journalistic ethos raise their heads like the Loch Ness monster and that panelist not only has to face the wrath of the opposing panelists, but also that of the host. Then, suddenly, the “rot” is not all-pervasive. When we criticize the BJP, or the so-called “non-seculars”, we are not being cynical, but let their be an accusing finger raised against either the Left or the Congress or the secular brigade, and the waves of “cynicism” hit us like an unanticipated tsunami.
Journalist like her do this on purpose, for I don’t doubt her intelligence. They are always playing these mind games with the audience and readers. They highlight and underplay issues very cleverly to render a designed color to them. Take for instance, if there is a debate going on on communal riots and the topic of Gujarat riots comes up and someone mentions the 1984 riots, or say the Midnapore massacre and she’ll quickly retort with a “let’s not play the blame game here,” or something of that sort.
No, I’m not singling her out and yes, all riots should be severely condemned and the culprits punished no matter who they are.
It’s just that I watched her program today. There are scores of journalists in India who follow double standards. In fact read Outlook and you’ll feel like the entire editorial staff is being paid by the Congress to sound unbelievably silly. A few years ago I stopped reading The Pioneer because its BJP-leaning was intolerable, that is, until I read The Asian Age whose journalists support Hamas and most terrorist outfits and either justify or underplay the various terrorist attacks that happen with uninterrupted regularity. Compared to that The Pioneer is far better.
Yesterday when I was browsing through the news channels (I was trying to figure out how to operate the remote of the new set top box) on NDTV a journalist, filled with emotional theatricality was explaining how the police in Nandigram was re-establishing the infrastructure and rebuilding the roads and help people. May be it’s true, or may be it’s not. Given NDTV’s track record, I saw the news, for a few seconds that I watched it, with a pinch of cynical salt.
Alka recently got a VCD of old Rajesh Khanna songs and yesterday I was quickly browsing through them on my laptop when I came across a song from the film Sachcha Jhootha (the true one and the liar — or something like that). The song begins with:
??? ?? ???? ???? ? ????
???? ?? ????? ?? ???? ???
??? ??????? ?? ???? ?????? ?
??? ??????? ?? ???? ?????? ?
which means
Don’t go by how people look
but look into their hearts
because looks are often deceptive.It’s the heart that is true
not the face
While listening to the song I could genuinely relate to the last portion:
?? ?? ?? ???? ?? ?? ???? ???
?? ?? ?? ? ????????
?????? ???? ?? ??? ?? ??
???? ??? ?? ?? ?????
??? ?? ???? ???
????? ???? ?? ??
???? ?? ?? ??? ???? ???? ???
??? ??????? ?? ???? ?????? ?
??? ??????? ?? ???? ?????? ?
The bindu missing over Dhang is not a typo, I couldn’t make my Hindi typing software type it. Anyway, this translates to:
We have physically been emancipated,
but mentally we’re still the slaves
We still bow to the foreign manners and dressing
We forget our ways and happily adopt foreign ways
and we’ve lost the old tradition of love and nearness
This is exactly what one sees around. People are crazy about things/people from abroad. Of course a big reason is in our country quality production lacks at all level and corruption and distrust is all-pervading, but still, there is some behavioral problem with us, whether it is voluntary or orchestrated. Alka, who has been a student of history often blames it on Thomas Macaulay who once said:
We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect.
Well, he pretty much succeeded in that. Macaulay envisaged an upbringing that would make the Indians the mental slaves of the British for ever. The British packed their bags and left but they left the psychological leashes behind and eventually we became a dog nation that could be taken for a walk by any western country. OK, a bit dramatic but you get the point.
There is an anecdote once my teacher narrated and this happened when the infrastructure in Delhi was being revved up for the Asian Games. An architect was called from the USA and with great anticipation everybody was waiting for his arrival. But alas! He turned out to be an Indian. He got such a lackluster response from the Indian officials that outraged, he went back and sent his junior here, who was, to the great delight of Indian officials, a Caucasian. It goes without saying he was received famously.
Personally I don’t resist change and I prefer the western society to our own vastly hypocritical and defeatist society. But there is a limit to copying the others. Individuality and personal taste no longer matter. People don’t do things they like, they do things that are considered hep. This not only stifles free thought and creativity, it also proves fatal for those who cannot cope with the pressure of following the herd.
The communists’ response to the Nandigram uprising shouldn’t come as a surprise, and in fact, more than the shock, the public should express something like, “I told you so!”. Our governments, no matter to what political ideologies they belong, cannot resist violence given a chance. Whether it’s the Congress (anti-Sikh riots of 1984), the BJP (Gujarat riots) or the Left (they kill anyway) killing people comes easy to them, and in fact that was the primary motivation of my previous post titled Proving again how savage we are: whether you are a dog or a human, in our country you can be very easily killed and people will either turn a blind eye or try to justify the insanity by ludicrous arguments.
Life comes cheap in India because if you don’t value, if you don’t respect the other’s life, how can you respect your own life? We are all inter-connected in one way or the other and as we are not interested in A’s life, there are countless Bs who are not interested in our lives. People can come and beat you in your own house not because they are strong and mighty, but because nobody in the neighborhood is going to stand up for you. And this holds true for you too — you too are not going to stand up for your neighbor. In front of twenty people two guys can harass a girl with impunity. Dons can contest elections and become ministers and then formulate laws for us. Somebody actually tried to immolate himself when Salman Khan was arrested for hunting endangered wildlife.
Our thinking is all screwed up and that’s why we get the kind of governments we get. Whatever happened in Nandigram to the people and whatever is happening in Karnataka to the dogs is an extension of our defeatist attitude towards life. The fault lies with us, not the perpetrators because they do what they have to do. In India a majority of us are just interested in ourselves and this fatal mentality has begun to take its toll. In a delusional state we’ve forgotten that everything in the eco-system, and the society, has to work in tandem. We forget that what we give always comes back to us, even if it is apathy.
We are always complaining about rampant corruption, inefficient administration and goonda politicians. It’s high time we started complaining about our attitude; the rest will automatically go away. We need to love life, and not only our own.
Update (March 15, 2007): An article in The Pioneer titled Spectators to mass murders narrates some heart warming incidents of dogs saving the new born human babies when the babies were abandoned by their mothers. This article also addresses some issues raised by a few commentators here, for instance,
…the national electronic media began showing clips of the acts of stomach-turning cruelty on cowering dogs. Shockingly, a section of the local media not only made no mention of these, but began reporting cases of people being bitten by dogs and stating how dangerous to humanity the latter had become.
And also
A large number was killed most savagely. The carcasses of some indicated that their throats had been slit and they had been left to bleed to death gasping for breath, or that they had been electrocuted. Every face bore the stamp of unbearable agony. If this was horrifying, infinitely more so was what happened in Mandya where strays were caught, had their heads smashed or were injected with poisons which made them die writhing.
and
As the macabre festival of mass killings raged, I wondered whether any of the perpetrators had heard of such stories or read even a minuscule fraction of the voluminous literature on man-dog relationship that exists. Then I remembered that Bangalore has had, for years, people who had made the mass killing of stray dogs their lives’ mission. They now seemed bent upon capitalising on the widespread shock and anguish caused by two grave tragedies to demand the scrapping of the Animal Birth Control (ABC) programme that the BBMP had been successfully implementing in collaboration with several non-governmental organisations to reduce the number of stray dogs in the city, and the resumption of mass killing, which had been the practice until 1999.
And this exactly echoes the my view
While I am not surprised to see a sick fringe of society using every opportunity to press its savage agenda, I never expected the Government and municipal authorities of Karnataka leading the killing of stray dogs with such gusto. Nor did I expect people in authority at the Centre and in the States to remain silent spectators to the acts of horrifying cruelty that have taken place.
The previous post follows
Lack of progress often makes our thoughts and actions sub-human. We’re so used to being cruel to others and tolerating daily cruelties upon us that we’re almost numb to things happening around us or in our country. That’s why things like Nithari happen. That’s why inept governments like the present government come to power.
The insane killing of street dogs in Karnataka (especially in Bangalore) is not only appalling, it’s criminal too, and its horrifying to think that some people actually endorse such a barbarity. Despite the fact that our constitution says it’s criminal to be cruel to domestic as well as stray/wild animals, the officials in Karnataka are butchering street dogs like bloody maniacs. Whoever ordered such a campaign should either be arrested or dispatched to some mental asylum.
It all started when a pack of stray dogs killed a 4-year-old boy. Having a child I know this could be the worse nightmare parents could face and no doubt those parents must view all street dogs as demons, and it should come as no surprise if they or their near and dear ones want the dogs mercilessly killed. In their situation even I may react in the similar manner. But as people who are not close to the family we should know dogs didn’t kill the child as an act of mischief or criminal intent — only humans do that. Animals just react on their instinct, and it is really stupid to open Bedlam gates and let the psychos lose upon all dogs. They are being captured in a blood curdling manner and they are killed as if their pain is no pain.
I once had to call an NGO working for the welfare of street dogs (Friendicoes, Delhi) because there was a bitch in our locality who had just given birth to a few puppies and in a nervous state she was attacking all the kids of the locality. Since these people work for dogs so they cause the least trauma to the animal while capturing it. Still, the way that bitch wailed and protested, I kept crying for a long time for making that call. So you can just imagine what happens to a street dog when the municipality guys (who are anyway half-mad even when they are dealing with humans) catch it with their long poles and nooses.
In Karnataka they don’t even care whether they are killing the animals properly or not. Sometimes the throat is slit and the animal is let lose to bleed and die. Sometimes extremely poor quality of poison is given that prolongs the agonizing death for even days. On many occasions they throw many dogs into a deep pit, pour petrol on them and set them ablaze. Can you see any sense? What does it tell about us as a society?
Killing animals for a purpose is one thing and killing them inhumanly just because you can (or for some political reason it seems over there) is another. Whose fault is it that there are so many street dogs around? For years they have been talking about controlling the dog population but haven’t done much. There is so much garbage on our streets that stray dogs are bound to breed. Then, every Tom, Dick and Harry brings home a pet dog on a whim and then upon realizing that it is not that easy to keep a pet they abandon the dogs that eventually contribute to the escalation. Every descendent of a street dog was once a pet dog as street dogs are not natural animals unlike their counterparts in the wild. People should have to obtain a license to keep a pet and it should be criminal offence to abandon your dog just like that.
Neutralizing them is costly but that’s the only option we’ve got. The government wastes so much tax payers’ money on stupid populist schemes, why cannot it allocate a few hundred crores on this campaign? I’m sure it’ll be a one time investment, as once the population is controlled and once the necessary measures are taken to keep the streets free of litter and garbage and small time shops and restaurants are barred from throwing food in the open, the dog population will remain in check automatically. In the meantime, whoever is responsible for the current massacre shouldn’t go unpunished. It’ll be shameful for the country.
Note: I started writing this post I think a couple of weeks ago but lots of pressing workload coupled with an attempt at spending “workless” weekends (I’m overdoing the relaxation thing perhaps because I haven’t don’t it for years) kept pushing it farther and farther. I hope I finish it today.
I’ve been tagged by Alka to write about the bizarre dreams (or any notable dreams) I have had and remembered. For months I haven’t had a nightmare. I’ve had sad dreams, and I think I’ve even had dreams from my past life, or from another parallel life, and even from another dimension (feeling two-dimensional, for instance). Before I go on, a few years ago I read Carl Jung’s autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections in which he has talked in detail about what dreams mean. He said when you dream, your unconscious is trying to tell you something. He foresaw many great historical events in his dreams including the first world war.
After reading Jung’s book I started chronicling my dreams and I pursued this exercise for a week but then I lost track. Some day I’m going to restart writing them down. Coming to the current post.
- I saw this dream when Vasudha had started crawling. Alka, I and Vasudha were in some foreign country. It was some country Albert Camus would describe in his books — marginally developed but living an off-white, gloomy existence. We were in a building (painted white from the outside), dark, massive, lots of panels and galleries going here and there. Just like the building, our room too was dark and lugubrious and everything seemed to be an extension of the all-pervading darkness. Even Alka, lying on a bed (in fact in the name of furniture there was just that bed there) appeared just like an outline. There were numerous beams joining different parts of the building, and when I looked out of the window, Vasudha was crawling on one of those beams. We seemed to be on the 5th or 6th floor.
Petrified, I tried to call her back. She turned around, gave me a smile, and then resumed her crawling towards the facing gallery. I tried to wake up Alka, but she simply raised her head, looked at me and then fell back to sleep. Since she was covered in darkness, I couldn’t see her expression. I kept call both her and Vasudha. I was sure any moment Vasudha would fall off the beam. Then all of a sudden she appeared on the beam that seemed to be joining the opposite galleries of a lower floor – 3rd or 4th floor. Losing all hope of retrieving her from there, I somehow climbed on to the frame of the window and crawled out on to the beam. It was a very cold beam, seemed like newly white-washed because I could smell the white paint. When I looked down I saw Vasudha on the ground floor, crawling over a very dirty floor. There was a leaking tap in the corner and with great force and happiness she was crawling towards it. There was a puddle around the tap full of rotten water and algae. I was sure she would drink that water. I screamed at her as loudly as I could, and I woke up. It was quite a disturbing dream, full of helplessness. It was a great relief to see her sleeping peacefully by my side.
- This dream I saw when our pet dog Suzie had just died. I was extremely attached to her. In the dream, she comes back and we know she’s dead. She still looks cuddly and soft and she runs around as she used to when she was alive, but her eyes are black, like, there are just two elongated holes instead of the eyes. She is not coming close. I don’t know who else is with me, but we talk about bringing her inside as we always did when she used to run out. In those days the fly-over near the Apollo Hospital (in Delhi, on Mathura Road) was still being built. All of a sudden, I’m lying near the wall of the fly-over and there are beggars and laborers sitting around me. I don’t know why I don’t have my crutches with me. And Suzie is lurking around. She doesn’t come near even when I keep calling her. I still know she’s dead. She looks hostile now. In reality I was never scared of her biting me (she had done it many times) but in the dream there is a strange fear. The fear is not about she biting me, but about she being dead and hostile. The rough, broken surface is hurting my elbows and knees and I try to raise myself but there is no strength in my arms. I desperately want to go home. I don’t recall when I woke up.
- This is a bit funny and I used to have it regularly, at least once a week. In the dream different cows used to hit me with their horns. They never gored me or trampled me; they just pushed me and I used to fall down. This dream I kept having for more than a year. I haven’t had it for many years now.
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