I generally don’t use such expressions on my blog but this is a clear case of mutual ass-licking. First NDTV declares Manmohan Singh the leader of the year and then sycophant journalists like Rajdeep Sardesia, Barkha Dutt and Vinod Dua are conferred Padma Sri, one of the highest civilian awards in India. It is anybody’s guess why these three journalists got the award.
At home we were discussing if such biased people keep on getting such awards then what credibility do such awards carry? Actually these kinds of awards fetch many privileges to the awardees, for instance getting their books published, obtaining lucrative government contracts, getting highly sought-after assignments abroad, and of course, in this twisted case, lots of publicity to the news channels they belong to.
Last year I read Arun Shourie’s “Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud” in which very laboriously he has explained, taking examples from various texts and other sources, how these “respected” journalists, historians and scholars keep promoting each other’s works and causes and keep getting rewarded in shady manners and then keep getting cushy jobs and assignments and this cycle goes on and on and on. The only difference now is that common people can articulate their thoughts using blogs and other communication means. So at least there is a certain section that can see the truth and talk about it and I think this is an extremely positive development, and this is a reason why conventional journalists dislike new-age media, especially the kind of media that empowers practically everybody to communicate and exchange ideas.
In another diabolical development our Prime Minister declared that the families of jihadis who are killed by the Indian armed forces will receive compensation from the government. Read this satire recently published in The Pioneer. This is like telling them: kill our army men and if they kill you back we will compensate your families. In another right-thinking society such a Prime Minister would have been arrested for abetting terrorism and his or her party would have never been able to form another government. But alas! This is India, the land of million tragedies. And then they wonder why the Indian Army is short of 12,000 officers. Who would like to fight for the government that compensates people who are out to kill them? This is so bizarre.
Andher nagri by the way means a completely chaotic state of affairs where nothing logical happens.
Technorati Tags: barkha dutt, rajdeep sardesai, vinod dua, padam sri
Today the people of the housing society where we live celebrated the Republic Day by hoisting the national flag and organizing a small lawn party. We didn’t go but then we normally don’t attend events organized by the society because we find most of the people snobbish (and I’m sure they must find us snobbish). But anyway, this is the first time I’ve seen residents coming together and celebrating events like the Republic Day and the Independence Day. Maybe because it is a teachers’ housing society.
There was a time when the Republic Day used to be a special event at our house too. We were quite young then: 12-15 years. Actually it was our mother who was a great fan of the Republic Day parade that they used to telecast over the state-run TV channel, Doordarshan. Even the anchors that used to give the running commentary were celebrities in themselves. I remember two names: Sukhdev Singh and Komal GB Singh, and of course, Kamleshwar.
Our mother used to make us get up early in the morning, have baths, get ready and then have a comprehensive breakfast while watching the parade. She used to prepare a special breakfast on that day, many often consisting of puris, chhole, aaloo, halwa, kheer, etc. in various combinations.
The program used to start with the customary arrival of the President in his (we had never had a woman president by that time) horse driven bogey accompanied by six or seven or maybe nine bodyguards on horses. That was some British Raj tradition I guess. With the advent of terrorism and I think the assassination of some top leaders like Indira Gandhi, the bogey was replaced by a bullet-proof Mercedes car.
The Presidents, with their bulging bellies (especially Giani Zail Singh) and awry postures, alternately used to stand and sit while the marchers and bands from all the three armed forces, singing or playing kadam kadam badhaija (keep marching forward) etc., would march from Raj Path to India Gate and from there, I guess, to Janpath. They were (I’m always using the past tense because I’m talking about the thing that we used to see on TV — the parade, in its mutated form still takes place) accompanied by the latest tanks, missiles, guns, helicopters and other warheads that the country had required or indigenously developed that year.
After the military parade came the jhankis (right now, although I know it, I cannot recall the English equivalent of the word). They were like miniature models, placed upon moving vehicles, of the ways people lived, earned their living, and celebrated various festivals in different states. Some just had figurines and mannequins depicting various activities and traditions and some had human artists performing various acts of living and enjoying. They were always a treat to watch and the best one even won a prize. The Delhi jhanki always used to be made of flowers; once upon a time Delhi used to be the green capital of India, now it is merely an ugly, concrete jungle. Oh yes, the Commonwealth Games.
The jhankis were followed by performances from various Delhi schools and if I remember correctly some representations came also from other adjoining states. The performances mainly consisted of dance items intermingled with visual effects synthesized with the help of cardboard, plants, masks, clothes, rings, etc. Here too the best school performance used to earn a prize.
In the end there used to be a fly-past of a few fighter planes and military helicopters. I remember children used to run out to see the fighter planes because they used to fly over our houses. As a precaution people living in the city were advised not to eat in the open so that not to attract birds. The military helicopters used to throw rose petals at the spectators and hundreds of balloons filled with helium and carrying the colors of the flag were released. And then with the same ceremony, the President, accompanied by the state guest (the way Sarkozy has come this time, with his model girlfriend), used to leave.
Normally after that they used to show patriotic songs from Bollywood movies. This was the most interesting thing for me because most of the old patriotic songs are excellent compositions sung by the greatest singers India has been blessed with so far.
There is another memory that is attached to this day. The sunny day. I used to dislike, no, hate winters because I am hypothermic. I don’t know why I remember it was always on this day, after having watched the parade on TV, when we used to go out in the small backyard of our house, to sit in the sun, I used to notice that the sun had come up (come up not in the morning way but had risen in altitude as it does as summer approaches) and there used to be more sunshine in the backyard and it stayed there for a longer period. I used to measure this by the size of the backyard portion with unobstructed sunshine. There was another row of two-storey flats behind our row and unless the sun was high enough we wouldn’t receive ample sunshine in the backyard. So the more the shadow of the other houses receded, the greater was the indication of the approaching summer. It was only on the Republic Day that I used to check whether the shadow had crossed the threshold. That used to be the best thing for me on the Republic Day.
Note: a jhanki is a tableau.
Technorati Tags: republic day, india
For many months I have been thinking of giving up eating meat. Once I didn’t eat non-vegetarian food for almost 6 years but then I don’t remember when and how I again started eating.
Sticking to a vegetarian diet is healthy both physically and mentally because when you’re not eating meat you are not giving toxins to your body; most of the toxins in our bodies come through non-vegetarian intake. Vegetables hardly have toxins. Some people argue that even vegetables these days come polluted with pesticides and other chemicals. I won’t disagree but despite that the vegetarian diet is far more healthy than the non-vegetarian diet and I hope to switch to it soon.
I am already consuming more fruits and vegetables as I mentioned in one of the previous posts that I’m trying to reduce weight. We haven’t had a non-veg meal for almost 2 weeks and we haven’t missed it. In fact both Alka and I prefer eating vegetables — both raw and cooked.
Here is an interesting link the talks about 10 reasons to give up not vegetarian diet.
Technorati Tags: vegetarianism, healthy food, non-vegetarian
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Now since I have read these words, I remember that even I wish for such a world for my daughter, a world where people won’t judge her by the color of her skin and by the things she owns and doesn’t own.
I don’t know how much things have changed in America where Martin Luther King fought against racial discrimination and color-based prejudices, but in India they are more or less the same the way they used to be a few hundred years ago: only their manifestation has altered. We still have great attitudinal differences between the haves and the have-not’s; the skin-color does make a big difference to a majority of people; religious and caste confrontations are as rampant as they were in the past. If you don’t wear trendy and expensive clothes, if you don’t possess a big automobile, if you don’t have a big house furnished with all the comforts money can buy, you’re not up to the mark — you have not arrived.
I know to many people such things don’t matter — they don’t matter to me — but to impressionable minds, the minds who still have to develop their own opinions do get affected by the social and media bombardments of psychological propaganda. Things that I have mentioned above are not harmful per se, they become harmful when people become obsessed with them and stop doing things that they should actually do for the pursuit of these things. What if you can be a great painter, a novelist or an athlete but you get stuck with the wrong occupation just because you need to buy that car and that house and you got to be seen in that restaurant sipping that foul-tasting wine? Won’t that be tragic? I don’t want my daughter to ever feel uncomfortable because of her color; I would rather prefer she focuses all her physical and intellectual energies into developing her skills and passions, and of course her personality and attitude.
There is so much to do in life. Why waste precious moments fighting and nurturing prejudices?
In 1980 I spent a few sleepless nights because someone had said that the world was going to end in that year and it had been predicted in some religious book. I was quite worried and the thought came haunting me every night because I don’t know why that was the only time I remembered the excruciating eventuality, and strangely nobody around me was bothered, I remember. It seems I was the only one who had taken the declaration seriously.
Then there was this Skylab that was supposed to fall on our heads because it had developed some problem. That was too in the early 80s and I was quite young. I worried for my life and the lives of the near and dear ones. Although the faulty satellite could have fallen anywhere in the world (it eventually fell into the ocean) somehow I was sure that the cursed thing would surely land on our block of houses. Among friends we often talked about building protective roofs over the houses but the elders didn’t seem very worried although they did talk about the impending danger.
Then it was supposed to be in 1990. I don’t know if it was a Nostradamus prophecy or what but in that year too the world was supposed to end. I was pretty grown-up by then and had a bag full of problems of my own so the issue just intrigued me but it never actually scared me.
The same kind of excitement was raked up recently when a news channel declared that a meteorite is predicted to hit the earth as early as 2029. They even interviewed a few grim-looking scientists (it seems scientists in India aren’t crazy about keeping clean and shaving regularly) who suggested a few ways of nullifying the approaching rock from the universe. I did some research on the Net and found out — to my great relief — that back in 2004 it had been confirmed that the possibility of the meteorite hitting our planet was remote, and in fact there was no chance of it colliding with the earth and orchestrating an Armageddon scenario.
Although it is relieving, it doesn’t mean that we are safe from future hits. It has been fully confirmed now that the great dinosaurs were made extinct by a massive hit from the skies. The earth has had its share of apocalypses in the past; we haven’t directly faced them because we are, humans I mean, so new here. Dinosaurs walked upon the surface of the earth for at least 100 million years. We haven’t been here properly for even one million years. I think it is the law of probability that has saved us so far. The universe is full of stray comets, meteorites and inexplicable phenomena that can destroy life here within seconds. It’s just that the universe is infinitely vast and there is lots of space for every kind of object in it, right from atoms to constellations. Another thought, what if the laws of the universe change suddenly and every form of matter disintegrates?
Anyway, beyond a certain degree you cannot control life-and-death.
In “The Last Mughal” William Dalrymple has very beautifully described the anguish Bahadurshah Zafar goes through when he is sent to exile. Although I’m not a landless soul my ambitions keep me away from getting too attached to the soil I dwell upon. I constantly tell myself that the place is not important, what you do, how you do, is. But still, the old smells, the bygone textures and the eddies of chimerical memories still come a visiting and make me want to dive into the valleys of yore. These are momentary reveries and I generally am more interested in things that are happening or about to happen, not that have happened. So my place is where I and my family reside for the moment.
Mai sent me Taslima Nasreen’s story (it’s published in Outlook but to read it there you need to log in first — so I’ve linked to another page with the entire story), and it really breaks your heart to know how attached she is to Bengal, and how betrayed she feels. The entire feeling is summed up here:
This is my beloved India , where I have been living
and writing on secular humanism, human rights and
emancipation of women. This is also the land where I
have had to suffer and pay the price for my most
deeply held and fundamental convictions, where not a
single political party of any persuasion has spoken
out in my favor, where no non-governmental
organization, women’s rights or human rights group has
stood by me or condemned the vicious attacks launched
upon me. This is an India I have never before known.
A person cannot live where she wants to live simply because she writes and expresses herself, and some people cannot digest what she expresses. As a state we have totally failed, as a mass ideology we have totally failed because what the foreign rulers did to us we are doing it to others. I personally don’t know how it feels to be uprooted because I have never felt rooted. First of all she never wanted to leave Bangladesh — her land — and finally when she found the same smell and texture of her ancestral soil in West Bengal she was again packed off to an alien environment. For what? Disagreeing? It’s really embarrassing for a country that such a treatment is meted out to a writer due to political and extremist reactions.
Technorati Tags: taslima nasreen
Update: A tradition being hundreds of years old doesn’t mean that it doesn’t suck, but this is the reason that has been used to revoke the ban on jallikattu. Although the traditional bull fight took place at various places it was held under “supervision” but we all know in India what supervision really means. While revoking the ban the court has instructed that no cruelty should be meted out to the bulls for instance chili powder should not be blown into their eyes and nobody should pull their tails. Even if these instructions are strictly adhered to we can never be too sure; they might find some new ways to torment the poor animals. I hope this tradition fades away in the coming years.
The original post: What’s so martial about scores of men taming a bull blinded by throwing chilly powder into its eyes? If you are feeling so valorous then go out and fight with the goons and the corrupt who are constantly harassing the society. Join the army. Why torment an animal just to disguise your physical and mental impotency? This is not only barbaric it is pathetically shameful and it is good that the Supreme Court has decided to ban the fight in Tamil Nadu where this dark-age cruelty has continued for the past 400 years and in the last 10 years 200 people have been gored to death by the raging bulls. But I have no sad feeling for the dead people because they died doing what they wanted to do. I definitely feel sad for the bulls who have no say in all this.
Tradition is hard to contain; people protested even when evils like Sati and child marriage were banned. Mass protest against the ruling doesn’t mean the fight should be allowed to happen.
Technorati Tags: bullfighting
But excellently rendered:
Lose law breeds cruelty because of a sense of impunity. Recently a man was tied to a vehicle and dragged for 2 km, acid was poured into his eyes and a big stone was thrown on his head just because he had stolen a few beetle nuts. Now why would someone inflict so much torture upon another living being for such a small act unless the perpetrator is diabolically revengeful, extremely angry or simply out of his mind? It doesn’t make sense to cause so much anguish and distress to a person. Just imagine, why would you pour acid into someone’s eyes knowing that you will permanently destroy them? Is stealing beetle nuts such a grave crime that the person should lose his eyesight forever and that too after going through so much pain?
What sort of satisfaction do you derive when you inflict so much pain and when you commit acts that can completely alter someone’s destiny? Is it the pleasure of the pain or is it the feeling that no matter what you do you cannot be harmed; that person cannot retaliate and nobody else is going to confront you? It is like killing an ant: it is very easy to kill an ant and it is quite difficult to kill a dog or a cow because people are going to notice your act easily. The same happens when you feel that nobody is going to raise a finger if you crush a human being and in fact crushing a human being’s spirit gives you more sense of power than tormenting an animal because tormenting animals is more common than tormenting human beings. Back when lots of anti-Black activities used to take place in America a few white boys dragged a black man behind the station wagon and they kept on dragging him until the man’s head came off and rolled to the side of the road. In my previous post I wrote about the policeman who, due to their callous attitude, needlessly kept a man behind bars of 54 years.
I think these things happen because people are not held accountable. I’m not saying that everybody turns barbaric and cruel in the absence of strong law, but some people among us do need strong laws because that is the only language they understand. It’s like, some people can’t work at the office unless their superiors are breathing down their necks or like students who can’t study without constant threats from teachers and parents. A person who causes pain just for the heck of it fully understands its importance and that’s why he or she inflicts it. People who are simply callous because nobody is going to come and question them too need strong consequential measures. A combination of callousness and lawlessness causes immeasurable agony to innocent people.
The person who blinded the petty thief mentioned above knew that he was not endangering himself by irreversibly injuring the other hapless person. If that person knew that he would have to bear the consequences severely he would have never committed such a barbaric act. If he knew that acid would be poured into his eyes too he would have never blinded the other person. Similarly, had the officials who were responsible for the long imprisonment of the person mentioned in the previous post known that they would have to pay severely for not taking care of the paperwork they would have never neglected their duty. Those white boys in America would have never dragged that black man had they known that they would meet a similar fate in the near future.
Am I proposing something like an Arabic law where you take an eye for an eye and an arm for an arm? It is difficult to say because I certainly don’t want to propose something like that. But then why not, if there can be a system that correctly — hundred per cent correctly — identifies the criminal? In the civil world this is a very big problem and most of the time criminals take advantage of this: that not a single person who is innocent should be punished even if ten criminals go free. I fully subscribe to this philosophy although it scares me. The grief caused to an innocent person being punished is a lot severe compared to the satisfaction you give to a criminal by letting him or her go unpunished. But the problem doesn’t stop here although I wish it would.
Why are people put behind bars? Why some people are awarded the death penalty? There are three reasons: a person must pay for what he or she does otherwise there will remain no difference between good and bad; the person should be kept away from the society so that he or she can cause no further harm; and last, to give some solace to the victims or their loved ones by making the perpetrator suffer for making them suffer. The second reason is the scariest. The remaining two are more or less emotional and to a certain extent we can do without them because the solace to the victims or their loved ones and making the criminal pay for what he or she has done is not going to undo what has already been done. The dangerous thing is the proceeding crime. A person who is not punished the first time is more prone to committing the same or more serious crime the second time and so on. The less a person is punished the more daring he or she grows. So what causes more anguish: making sure that those 10 criminals are punished even if one innocent has to be incarcerated or letting those 10 criminals go so that some of them can commit more crimes, in order to save the innocent one? This is very easy to say when you are not at the receiving end. So what alternative remains?
Obviously, better implementation of existing laws.
I don’t have the data to verify but I think an-eye-for-an-eye kind of legal system can be more effective than the one where you simply imprison the criminal. The idea is that the person should have to go through the same kind of pain he or she has caused. It’s barbaric, sure, but it will be more effective. But can it work in the present setup? Certainly not. With so much corruption and moral decay such kind of law will only become a diabolical instrument in the hands of criminals and corrupt individuals. Hopefully, the society will never have to resort to such dark tactics.
Societal censuring can also play an important role. In fact lots of crimes can be averted if there is a strong negative reaction from the society.
It was shocking to read today in the newspaper that a man in Assam needlessly spent 54 years in jail simply because nobody paid attention to his release papers. And when he was released at the age of 78, he died after two years. This sounds like a tragic Russian novel.
Lalung (a tribal) was arrested when he was 23 but somehow was never produced before the magistrate. His family kept on thinking that he had been taken by evil spirits. For 54 years he remained locked up without any hearing. The tragic part is that weeks after his arrest he was sent to a mental hospital and from there the doctors kept on sending letters to the police authorities stating that nothing was wrong with him but nobody responded. He was finally released, as the link above mentions, at the behest of the newspaper, in 2005. A public interest litigation fetched him a compensation of Rs. 300,000 and a monthly pension of Rs.1000.
This is an injustice at its grossest self. I am not saying that it is a rare case, for, many a life has languished in the dark dungeons of prejudice and favoritism since time immemorial and fates have been worse than this. But why should such things happen just because a few people don’t care about some person who holds no position in the society? It could have been anybody: you, I, our grandparents. Just imagine spending entire lifetime in jail because of misunderstanding and because nobody cares what happens to you? Does a prick in the conscience, compensation, a documentary and a place in the newspapers bring this man’s life back? What happens to those people who sat upon his papers and did nothing? Shouldn’t an example be set? Shouldn’t people be taught that every life counts, that every life is precious?
I think in a case like this the true justice can only prevail if people who could have done something but did nothing are punished or in some way made to pay. Of course, nothing can pay, but still it can act as a lesson for future assholes like those policemen. There must be hundreds of thousands of people bearing the consequence of such callous attitude. There are many injustices in our society and there are many injustices that can be eliminated by taking some sincere, timely action. They don’t even require much effort. Even if you provide information to people who don’t have it can prove to be of great help.
Coming back to Lalung I am wondering how he spent those 54 years? What went through his mind? Did he ever know why he was arrested and why he couldn’t be released and why he was sent to a mental hospital? How did he see the world around him and how did he perceive the mankind? These days I am reading (trying to read actually) The Count of Monte Cristo in which the protagonist has to spend 23 years in jail because of no fault of his. The waves of hope, despair and revenge keep him from dying. What kept Lalung alive? Of course these days the jails are not as dismal as they were in the 17th century Europe but still jail is jail. I wonder how a tribal thinks. It will be a very challenging story to write even though it will culminate into a tragedy, a slow, progressing tragedy.
Philosophy says that everything happens for a reason. When we read small snippets of stories in the newspapers we often don’t know the entire thing. Maybe he spent a life totally contrary to the impression that we get from what we know presently.
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