Personally speaking, I’m not in favor of expressing views that are not directly concerned with me and that too from thousands of miles away but since I am coming across so many views and counterviews on whether a mosque should be allowed near the 9/11 bombings or not I thought, well, let me do some vocal thinking.

First of all I’m not clear whether it is a mosque or a cultural center they are talking about. If it is a cultural center then I wonder what the point of opposing it is. A cultural center — if it is actually a cultural center — is a good place to raise awareness and reduce animosities and chunks of misinformation floating around. It may bring people from different races and creeds closer. In fact such a cultural center would be a fitting reply to the perpetrators of the bombings. Just because the idea of this cultural center is coming from Muslims it shouldn’t be opposed.

What if it is a mosque? Frankly, I have no idea what to say. I have no objection to people building mosques but — and I may be wrong — it may end up sending the wrong signals to those who support fanaticism. It’s like, “Our religion and approach eventually triumphs; we first brought down the buildings and now there is a mosque there.” It may end up being the greatest symbolic victory for terrorists.

I am not saying that since a few Muslims are fanatics so the remaining ones must live under restrictions — religious or social — but a mosque at or near ground zero will definitely send wrong signals and encourage more Muslim youths to take up arms against other religions and ideologies. This is such a simple thing and I wonder why nobody is talking about it. This has got nothing to do with freedom of expression or practicing religion, this is common sense.

Even for a while if we ignore the “sending a wrong signal” point, why many people may be opposed to this idea is because most of the Muslims — and this is a sad reality — don’t vociferously come forward to denounce the violent side of Islam but when it comes to participating in token gestures like building mosques and religion-centric cultural centers all of a sudden they develop loud voices. I think this is the basic problem: this duality. It is so uncommon for the Muslims to protest against violent Islamic acts that whenever they do it becomes a news. If they openly and routinely oppose violence like everybody else does they will automatically become a part of the global society and consequently people of other faiths and religions won’t look upon them as some race quietly condoning violence or promoting it.

I would also like to make another suggestion to my Muslim friends. Just as they support the idea of building mosques in non-Muslim countries they should also put pressure on Muslim countries to let people from other faiths build temples and churches in Muslim and Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, etc. This way it will become a two-way approach rather than always demanding without giving. If Muslims want to be embraced they must also learn to embrace.

Just quickly went through this article that talks about how your level of happiness increases after having your own kid or kids. The article also refers to a survey that established that people are less happy after having kids.

Whether having kids makes you happy or not depends on lots of factors. It depends on your economic condition, your health, relationship between spouses, the aspirations of both the parents, facilities available in the area, and the support system the couple has. Having a child can totally turn your life upside down. Recently we saw a movie “Marlie and Me” and somewhere the character of Jenifer Anniston says, “Parenting is the toughest job in the world and nobody prepares you for it.”

Clichéd as it may sound, as a couple who have had a baby who, despite being exceptionally intelligent and talented, has some issues when it comes to eating, sleeping and paying attention to things that can make life a bit easier, we could totally relate to the statement. Since Vasudha’s birth we have totally been on our own, as neither my family nor Alka‘s (my wife) family was in a position to be around in case we needed some respite. She’s going to be 5 this July, and not even a single day, or even a few hours she’s spent without us. So for the past 5 years our lives have pretty much revolved around her.

Although I work from home, due to my cerebral palsy, beyond a certain level I cannot help Alka much, especially when Vasudha goes through periodic disturbed sleeping patterns and Alka ends up getting just 2-3-hour sleep for weeks. Sometimes Vasudha used to wake up just when Alka had fallen asleep. And it’s not just sleep. She doesn’t like to eat food but every other thing that can be chewed. She won’t write sometimes even a single alphabet or number without extensive prompting. When she’s not at school we cannot have a single sentence without her interference — spending even 5 minutes together ends up in something disastrous sometimes. She takes minimum one-and-half hour to have a meal. Getting her to fall asleep at night becomes an hour-long or even more project. Whatever you tell her to do the standard reply is “no”.

In India most couples who can afford, have a maid, but unfortunately, our experience with different maids has been quite disturbing. In India most couples occasionally have parental support which, as I mentioned above, has been missing from both our sides. I was living at my parents house when I got married but we had to move to a new place when Vasudha was just 3 months old.

In the building where we live, almost all the couples every second month call their mothers so that they can tend to other things while there is somebody with the child or children. People even go on holidays leaving their kids behind with a relative! The parents of one of our neighbors totally shifted here so that they could keep the kid while his mother went to office. There is nobody with whom we can leave our child for even 3 hours and go somewhere.

Actually it’s very difficult to relate unless you yourself go through a similar situation. The point is, if you try to attach a halo to the experience of having a child and bringing him or her up, I’m going to hit you with my crutch.

Again, as I mentioned above, it depends on your social-economic coordinates. Had we had the support many people take for granted (NRI couples make their parents visit them from India when they have a kid) may be I would have been writing a different experience.

Am I complaining? No, I’m just stating the facts and it doesn’t mean we haven’t had our share of happiness with our child. It’s not her problem that we have had a tough time. In fact, despite all the difficulties we’ve gone through, she’s the best thing that has happened to us, and I’m not saying this just for the sake of saying. She gives us a direction, a purpose. We know that with her around, the only option we have is keep on fighting and moving ahead. And it’s not just a litany of troubles. We have great times together. When she softly touches my face with her small hands or her cheek, the world stops and there remains no other desire. When she is lying by my side, ready to fall asleep, if I want to define heavenly bliss, that’s the time to define it with. We swell with pride when she effortlessly sings songs during school functions and parents and teachers are amazed at her talent. A mere sight of hers lights up the surroundings. She makes our world, our togetherness complete, and we wouldn’t have been us without her. She was our conscious decision, it was just that, we were ill-prepared. As she’s growing up, we’re able to communicate more and things are easing up a bit.

There, I was just going to write a small paragraph on the above-mentioned link. Having children and bringing them up and the related feelings depend on lots of factors, but yes, if you ask me if we ever regretted having a child, definitely not. It doesn’t make sense, but I guess this is how nature makes us. It’s kind of a sadistic pleasure you can say. Right in the midst of a highly chaotic day we do have that WTF feeling but that doesn’t last for long. The above-mentioned article ends quite aptly:

You will lose the freedom to go out on Friday and Saturday night, without a care in the world. You will lose freedom, period. You damn sure will lose sleep. But once that child is here, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without him. You will know contentment at a level beyond your imagination.

Ah, it’s after a long time I’m writing here. There’s no particular reason why I haven’t been writing here (sorry to my regular readers), but it also doesn’t mean I’ve abandoned this blog.

Coming to the topic. The “famous” artist MF Husain recently gave up his Indian citizenship and accepted Qatar’s offer to become its citizen. There’s been lots of breast-beating in the country — in fact I just read Barkha Dutt’s column in the HT on Husain becoming Qatar’s citizen — and they’re saying it’s perhaps one of the greatest cultural losses India has faced in the recent times.

He’s been hounded out of India, both by “religious fanatics” and the judiciary for depicting the famous Hindu gods and goddesses naked (some say he’s out only for monetary reasons because he can earn a lot more by not living in India, and it has got nothing to do with the security scenario). In his paintings he has disrobed all major divinities like Saraswati, Durga, Parvati, Sita, Mother India, etc. In one of the paintings goddess Durga is copulating with her tiger, for example.

Before proceeding further I must mention that being an Indian citizen, no matter how vulgar or outrageous depictions he created, he deserved all the security guaranteed by our constitution. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right of every Indian citizen. Even if a major section of our society finds his paintings revolting, our constitution has provisions to express disagreement too. While operating under legal parameters, his paintings could have been barred from public viewings. So ransacking his studios and threatening him physically should have been dealt with severely. In fact it’s the people who threatened him who should have been on the run, not Husain.

Hasain has never been my type of painter (I like Raja Ravi Verma, Shobha Singh, etc.) — I find his paintings quite trite and immature (overhyped), but that’s another issue. Artistic freedom, sure, I’m all for it. If Husain wants to paint naked Hindu gods and goddesses and wants to create the Kamasutra comic with Ram and Sita in lead characters, in the ideal world, nobody should have a problem. In fact I’d suggest to him — seeing his love for Hindu gods — he should have first converted to Hinduism and then painted.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world. We live in a world replete with blatant double standards.

Many who support Husain’s freedom of expression say that Hindus should be the last ones to protest as they have all sorts of gods and goddesses depicted performing various carnal feats in many temples and caves. That’s true, but I wonder if those gods and goddesses can be named. I haven’t visited these places, but can someone point, OK, look, here’s goddess Saraswati in the nude, and here’s Sita in close naked proximity with Ram or Hanuman? I don’t think so. None of those figures have prominent temples and classics written around them. They are all unknown yakshas and mohinis indulging in sex. So equating them with major worshiped folks like Saraswati, Sita, Hanuman, etc. is totally stupid and diversionary, to put it mildly.

In every major religion there are gods that enjoy a level of sanctity. Ram and Sita are highly revered, so are Saraswati, Durga, Kali, Hanuman and Laxmi — you cannot just go on painting them nude in the name of artistic expression, even if they’re mythological (many think they are not — but they have every right to think that way, just as those who don’t think that way). Religion has been here for thousands of years and it’s going to stay for at least a couple of centuries more (even scientology is a new religion), people are often ready to kill and die for it. People quietly accept hunger and backwardness but mess with their religious sentiments and they’ll cut you in half if they can. I’m not saying this is right, but this is a reality. It needs to be changed, it is changing, but it’ll take some time.

Freedom of expression comes with sensitivity. You don’t paint Muhammad sexually cavorting with one of his wives or camels, you don’t show Guru Gobind Singh intimate with Mata Sundri: the so-called Hindu fanatics just ransacked and threatened, Muslims and Sikhs will surely decapitate you, whether someone likes it or not, and you won’t even be able to run to another country, Qatar and all. This is a reality and hopefully such reactions will mallow down (we cannot accept them to go) with time. So no matter how “evolved” a painter you are, and no matter how tolerant and civilized religion you are dealing with, on your own, you should have enough dignity to draw a line.

I don’t really care where Husain lives and paints (may he be blessed with hundred more years), but if he wanted to live in India, even if it took the entire military, he should have been made to feel save. It’s a loss that he left, but it’s not a cultural loss, it’s an indictment of our inability to evolve as a truly democratic and civilized country.

Recently a link was posted on Facebook condemning the scheduled sacrificial slaughtering of 20,000 buffaloes by Nepalese Hindus. It is as it is tragic that we slaughter animals for daily consumption and it becomes more grotesque when they’re tortured and killed in the name of god. In some religions, Islam and Christianity for instance, the more the animals suffer, the better it is, because the blood needs to be drawn out drop-by-drop. In Islam since every animal slaughtered is in the name of god, every single animal goes through an agonizing death: gives you goose pimples when you sit quietly and think about the practice that has been going on centuries.

I’m glad in Sikhism no animal sacrifices are encouraged or tolerated and there are no ambiguities.

Then someone posted this nice link that explains what different Vedas say about animal sacrifice. For example,

The Rig Veda, the most ancient book of the Hindus, says ‘One who partakes of human flesh, the flesh of a horse or another animal and deprives others of milk by slaughtering cows, O King, if such a fiend does not desist by other means, then you should not hesitate to cut off his head (Rig Veda, X. 87. 16).’

Contemporary Hindu ritual is based on the Manusmruti and it is interesting to see that Manu lashed out against all forms of sacrifice and meat-eating. The Manu Samhita (5.48-52) recommends that since ‘meat can never be obtained without injury to living creatures, and injury to sentient beings is detrimental to the attainment of heavenly bliss, let him therefore shun the use of meat. Having well considered the disgusting origin of flesh and the cruelty of fettering and slaying corporeal beings, let him entirely abstain from eating flesh.’

I wonder why in this list of the 7 most impressive libraries from throughout history there is no Indian library.

I did some research and there were definitely some great libraries at the universities of Takshasila, Nalanda, Vikramshila and Kanchipuram. Of course libraries, especially during the ancient times, took decades, and even centuries to gain a stature, and they were among the first places to be burned down during an invasion. May be the Indian rulers and other influential people were always busy building mega temples so they never spared a thought for libraries and books, although some really great literature was being written throughout the history.

But then Nalanda was one of the first and the biggest centers of teaching in the world, back in the 5th century B.C. So may be people in India believed in disseminating information and sowing seeds of knowledge instead of hoarding it. Please share in the comments section what you know of great and ancient Indian libraries.

Suvro corrected the time and a few details about Nalanda university in the comments sections (thank you!). He wrote:

Oh, I think there’s a factual mistake regarding dates in your blogpost: Nalanda, to the best of my knowledge, grew out of a few villages donated to some Buddhist scholar/monks by a late Gupta king sometime in the 6th century A.D., not B.C.

Now women can have orgasm while giving birth, and instead of pain, childbirth can turn into sexual pleasure according to this article. You can view the video on the actual website that promotes this technique. Of course, understandably, there are people who cannot somehow relate childbirth with sexual pleasure. But I think this is just a mental block…after all a child is conceived, normally, when you are experiencing, and indulging in sexual pleasure. So why make women go through so much pain while giving birth? They say pain is required to bring the baby out. The same can be achieved with an orgasm.

Just read this engaging essay on why intellectualism and curiosity is throttled by the society. I think when we question people, we push them out of their comfort zones. Take for instance extra-inquisitive kids in the schools. Whenever they ask questions that are out of the scope of the ongoing discussion, they are thought to be disruptive, the teachers think they are braggarts, or are simply trying to act smart with the teachers. Sometimes the situation gets so worse that it is concluded that such children cannot study in the "normal" environment. This is because such children force teachers, and their fellow students, to think beyond the knowledge they already have. Children who are not curious and inquisitive, and simply stick to the books, are considered to be studious and "serious".

Curiosity and creativity bring about growth, both in terms of the intellect and monetary situation. If you are curious, you’ll think beyond your daily grinds. You will question the norms that hold you back. You challenge the ethics the society adheres to. You try to device new, creative ways of doing things better, forcing others to follow you or oppose you.

A few days ago Alka and I were watching on TV Mulayam Singh’s men distributing 100-rupee notes to poor people. Even 70-year-old men were grabbing the notes like kids, and it was really pitiful to see them like this. But this is how people are kept under subjugation. Keep them poor, keep them backward, keep them divided, keep them physically and intellectually week, keep their self-respect crushed, and don’t let them think. Thinking breeds intellectualism (not the sort that grew in West Bengal — that was defeatist intellectualism) and intellectualism makes you question, it makes you communicate and exchange thoughts. This is bad for rulers and politicians that thrive on backwardness and poverty.

On a micro level the same thing happens in schools and universities. Keep students so burdened with trivia (in the name of covering the syllabus) that they totally begin to shun active thinking. When they are not creative, they don’t seek creative answers and don’t ask challenging question, and this way, the teachers and educationists don’t have to work hard or work extra.

This is just one aspect that came to my mind. In the essay the writer has tried to argue that we are not as creative and inquisitive by nature as we are made out to be. He demonstrates this in this portion:

If humans are inveterate tinkerers (as they are) and if hunter-gatherers have an encyclopedic knowledge of their environment (as they do), why did writing have to wait for settled agriculture? Surely many groups must have experienced the loss of a key member who died, taking important knowledge with him. Surely many groups must have faced the problem of communicating among scattered members, where it might have been nice to tell a hunting party "we were attacked and had to move – here’s the new campsite." There was no lack of reasons to develop writing before agriculture. The lack of a permanent site should not have been an obstacle. Very few groups were so completely nomadic that they never returned to the same place, so almost every group should have known of protected sites within their normal range where they could have stored written records. Maybe some of the thousands of petroglyphs around the world did in fact serve for communication. But the question is nagging – if humans are really as creative and curious as we like to believe, why didn’t they develop an ability to record abstract ideas simply for its own sake, instead of starting off with a very narrow and utilitarian approach to writing?

This is the height of stupidity, or may be it is all intentional:

Ambika Soni, even vowed to “enter the auction if required as a last resort.” But in the end, officials decided not to do so, because the Delhi High Court had ordered an injunction to stop the auction in response to a petition filed by the Navajivan Trust, a publishing house that is Gandhi’s legal heir. (Mr. Otis’s items were acquired legally; some of them had been given away by Gandhi himself.)

The Indian government said that news of the injunction was passed to both the auction house and Mr. Otis, but the auction house said the Indian court had no jurisdiction in the United States.

“The government can’t participate because this would be contempt of court,” Prabhu Dayal, India’s consul general in New York, said in an interview on Thursday morning. “This is getting more complicated.”

Now, even a child would know that the Indian courts have no jurisdiction in the United States, so what was the f***ing sense behind filing a petition and getting an injunction to stop the auction? Wasn’t it counterproductive? As Ambika Soni said that the Indian government would even take part in the auction in order to obtain the items belonging to Mahatma Gandhi. Due to this stupid injunction that has no relevance in the US the Indian government could not participate.  I’m not saying that Mallya shouldn’t have won the bid but what if some other person from another country with no emotional attachment had won (I don’t mean to say you have emotional attachment just because you’re an Indian but the chance is greater)? The Indians can sometimes surpass anybody when it comes to being nihilistically proactive.

My thoughts are based on this link.

Frankly, I’ve never personally been in awe of the pubgoing crowd whether it’s girls, boys, bhais, behenjies, uncles and aunties simply because this behavior is a pathetic western imitation, and not an original socio-cultural indulgence for the purpose of spending some quality time. For most of them going to a pub and "taking a shot" is a style statement. The moment they enter a pub premises it dawns upon them like a heavenly realization, “finally, we have arrived!” Nonetheless they have all the right under the sun to indulge in such activities whether they’re pretending or not and nobody has a right to stop them.

In light of the recent attacks on pub-going women in Mangalore a FaceBook group has been created by the name of A Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women and they have decided to send thousands of pink panties to the offices of the Sri Ram Sena whose workers had attacked the inebriated ladies in the pub. I think it is a novel way of reacting to such cultural thugs rather than sitting quietly at home and commiserating.

Interestingly, Kanchan Gupta wrote a column in the Pioneer, berating the entire pink-chuddy-bhejo activity; he says this is a ridiculous activity and the country has much graver issues to tackle. Certain bloggers have also articulated their opposition here and here. I never noticed Kanchan Gupta writing a column in protest when the activists of the Sri Ram Sena went berserk and beat up the women. I also wonder if these bloggers had a few words to reprimand the action or if they were repulsed by the attack, the way they are when the “others” do such things.

Sadly, balanced view is rare in our country. People are either totally Left, totally Right or totally conspiratorial (our “secular” media). There is a big chunk of the population that is constantly finding stupid excuses for everything the fundamentalist Muslims indulge in. And there’s another section that is constantly sneering at reactions to Hindu fundamentalism and finding excuses for Hindu excesses. Both the sections imitate the very behavior of which they perpetually accuse each other. I think the only exception is the news channel Times Now… their reporting is unbiased to a great extent.

Yesterday we saw Slumdog Millionaire. Recently Kanchan Gupta had written that the movie is about defaming Hindus. This was a totally WTF column as there was no such thing in the movie and in fact it is quite a nice movie with a fast-paced plot and an interesting theme. In fact the slums of India is just a theme around which the story has been woven and it is nowhere like that poverty stricken art movie crap. Unfortunately there are people like him on both Hindu and Muslim sides who are constantly creating shadow monsters to beat them and spread fear in their respective communities.

Coming back to the loose, pub-going, forward-thinking women, no, I don’t support their cause, but I do support the reaction. I don’t think going to a pub makes you forward-thinking, but since our law doesn’t take its own course in such cases and you’ll find apologists in every nook and corner of the country (and the Internet) always pointing you to "look what the others are doing and we are not that bad" some kind of protest, even in the form of the pink-chaddi-bhejo-abhiyan must be appreciated by every responsible citizen of the country. The chuddies may be smelly, but the manifestation of the protest is certainly not.

Apparently the campaign has been organized by a Tehelka reporter (not sure) and it is a publication that I detest, but this is not the point. It is symbolic, and ideally, it should have been started by a person or an organization that really cares for the country, but even if it hasn’t been, you should support it simply to annoy people like Muthalik and show them that this is the sort of reaction their antiques get. Attack a fellow country man or woman in the name of culture, you get jail, and you get a pink chuddy. People who don’t see the implication, are simply dumb, or don’t have a sense of humor.

Click the image to enlarge it.