In my previous post I talked about the food becoming scarce and dear. The thought of food became a catalyst to another thought that has been coming to my mind for a few weeks, and that thought is, why don’t we feed those who don’t have food? This is no social work, this is nation-building.
I’ll talk from India’s point of view; we desperately need a thinking revamp when it comes to feeding ourselves and the others. Yesterday Alka and I were sitting in the balcony observing kids going to their schools, followed by mothers-teachers (in our building most of the mothers are teachers because this building was constructed by the society of teachers from a particular school). The children seemed to have no spirits. It was morning, and ideally they should have been full of vigor and enthusiasm; where was that charm of greeting a new day? We attributed this to food.
In India we stuff our bellies (those who can) but never give a second thought to the kind of food we are eating. We equate eating lots of food with nourishment. This misconception must be changed. We don’t need to eat lots of food, we need to eat good food.
The other thing is, we must routinely feed poor families that cannot afford food. As I mentioned above, this is not social work. There are lots of disparities in our country and that is why we are not progressing the way we should have. The poor family you try to feed might turn out to be a pack of assholes but that’s not the point. Feeding poor families will achieve two things that our country desperately needs:
- To a tiny extent it will bridge the gap between the haves and the havenots. It will sensitize us towards each other. There is lots of animosity: the rich dislike the poor and the poor dislike the rich and I see this everywhere. Someday this feeling is going to explode and nobody will be able to control the ensuing catastrophe. Knowing the ratio of haves and havenots you can easily make out who will suffer the most at the hands of whom. Feeding will at least initiate a contact.
- It will improve the health of people around you. With better health they will be able to work more. Take for instance your sweeper, or your maid. If you feed them, even twice a week, it will significantly improve their health and they will do their jobs better. Gradually, may be in the next 5 to 10 years, a small portion (because we cannot reach every nook and corner of the country) of the population will be healthier, happier.
From unhealthy food, and the lack of basic food, stem most of the problems India faces today. I think good food gives rise to good thoughts and good principals.
Sharing food is not as difficult as it seems. Small lifestyle changes can enable you to give food to the poor. If you eat 3 pizzas every month, eat two. If you go to a restaurant 5 times in a month, go 3 times. Don’t throw away the food after parties and marriages: let the poor have it. Be innovative and reduce your electricity bill and use that money for the extra food you need to purchase. Similarly, there are many cost-cuttings you can carry out to arrange enough money to feed a poor family.
Bush says the price of food has increased because people in India as well as in China are eating more. What does he intend to say, that it was better when people in these countries were impoverished and stayed malnourished? Some studies have claimed that 73% of food in the United States is disposed of, uneaten (read this). People simply consign the food on their plates to the garbage can as soon as they don’t feel like consuming it; and they take big portions even when they don’t intend to eat the whole thing. So much for causing food shortage by eating more by people in other countries.
I’m not denying that food habits in India have changed. In fact even at our house we eat a lot better than what we used to eat when we were kids. We were not poor back then but there was not much awareness regarding food-eating options and to be frank, not much was available. Due to overall progress and globalization people have access to a variety of comestibles, irrespective of the escalating costs.
But you cannot blame people for eating better, especially when people in your own country moronically go on wasting food and fuel despite the galling shortage. The problem is not the shortage, it is a litany of bad decisions. Currently, almost 30% of corn produce in the USA is converted into ethanol and similar trends are being observed in the EU where different governments are setting up targets for producing more and more biofuel.
In India more food rots in the godowns than is eaten. Shady marketers horde food so that they can sell it at the times of scarcity and in the process lots of it is destroyed, and the government doesn’t do much about this, and this must be happening in many countries. In fact numerous countries are experiencing food riots already.
People in Cuba can use PCs at home now. If you think this is the news from the early 90s you are mistaken. The communist government in Cuba never allowed its citizens to use computers. The Internet is still banned there. Empowerment and access to information are the most scary things for such regimes. Sometimes I feel certain people deserve such Draconian governments; they are too lazy or laid-back to overthrow their governments.
A couple of days ago I was reading in a forum that countries like India, China, Saudi Arabia, etc. don’t allow their citizens to use VoIP services like Skype because this will give them unrestricted power to communicate. Actually, Skype has many wonderful subscription features that allow you to make unlimited calls to landline phones as well as cellphones all over the world for a fixed, nominal, monthly fee. Only recently having a telephone itself was a luxury in India.
I don’t trust people easily, and I don’t take it in the negative sense. My life has taught me pretty good lessons on trust. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t entertain any sort of trust. For instance, these days sometimes I outsource content writing work and then I have to trust that the writers will finish the job in a decent manner, on time. Then, I trust that my clients will pay me for the content I deliver them. But this is as far as it goes: I don’t trust in the goodness of people just like that. This lady did and paid with her life. I trust very close family members though.
It so happened that yesterday I worked till 2:30 in the night and eventually when Alka and I settled down to have dinner I started surfing the channels to check whether we could watch something trashy (we have recently started watching Desperate Housewives, and Cheaters you see, gradually graduating from the Disney Channel stuff) while eating. We generally watch news but every news channel was showing that kidney king’s arrest and as usual, was overdoing it.
I found a channel that was showing some men’s program where they were talking about how to party, how to go to parties and how to organize parties. There was this the-king-of-cool-type guy who is very much “into the party scene” and he was enlightening the viewers with all his gayish gaiety about how to be a perfect host and a perfect guest.
Every aspect of the party should be rocking: music should be rocking, drinks should be rocking, food should be rocking, the place should be rocking, the neighborhood should be rocking, the hosts should be rocking and their pets should be rocking, and the guests should be rocking and if even one of these is not rocking it is very very shocking.
And what happens if one of these archetypal aspects are not rocking? Although it may leave the hosts with a lifelong trauma requiring long-term therapy to come to terms with the eventuality, he has no choice but to LEAVE the party. Just imagine how crushing it must be for the hosts, but so are the lives and ways of those who take the art of partying to unassailable heights.
He said that you should follow the dress code strictly — yes, many party invitations mention the dress code — and it is okay to be thrown out of a party if you don’t follow the dress code. Never arrive overdressed (something like wearing an overcoat, felt hat, dark big goggles, leather gloves and gumshoes) and never arrive underdressed (something like wearing just a thong or an underwear, or just a condom). But then he quickly added that no rules should be followed when you go to a party (this implies, we innocently used our meager, non-existent knowledge of the great partydom and hypothesized ourselves, that sometimes you can overdress and underdress). In between the interviewer advertised about a few music players (most of them cost more than Rs. 1,20,000) that can really make your party rocking.
He told the audience that it is not at all OK to be not to be invited to parties. One must be an active member of the city’s party circle, square, triangle, tetrahedron, and all sorts of geometric representations. If it is not so, you are not happening, you practically don’t have a life, you better not think you exist and outrage the decent party-goers. Man, if you want to be a party person you must idealize this gentleman. Right now I cannot remember his name but it was something like Nandani or Chandani. He is quite well-known in Delhi’s party circuits.
Anyway, as with wide eyes and gaping mouths (although we were eating, in between we did manage that awestruck look without spilling out the chewed contents of our mouths) we were absorbing these ambrosia-like rare pearls of wisdom, he delivered the cul-de-sac judgement, and that was, if you party you go there (he pointed upwards, like a prophet) and if you don’t party you remain there (he pointed downwards, with great, well-meant disdain). I don’t know about Alka but by the time we got over with the program, and our food, I had been left totally crushed. I had a complex that I had never had.
All my life, if I can remember I must have gone to 4 parties and 3 of them were the lowly mohalla parties. By the party standards I have remained there (pointing downwards). The realization has hit me with an amplified clarity after watching that life-altering program, and no wonder I’m struggling all the time. All these years I have been toiling like an animal to achieve my goals and all I had to do was somehow wriggle my way into the cities party circles (or squares, triangles, etc.). Not that it is an easier fete; you have to be really privileged to join the elite class of partygoers, but still had it been revealed to me earlier I could have at least tried. All these years! dammit.
So hey party gods of NOIDA and Delhi (both cities will do)! Invite me to one of your glorious gatherings you call parties. Let me sip the heavenly cocktails and unleash my dormant spirits of greatness. Grace my booty by letting me shake it in your esteemed company and let me invoke deities of success. I’m waiting with expectant eyes and bated breath to be declared as a guy who has finally arrived (or crashed-in, whatever you deem fit to call).
Whatever is happening in Mumbai is sad as well as shocking. If you can be attacked and bullied like this in your own country where are you safe then? The recent violence against north Indians in Mumbai is nothing unique; it mostly happens against communities and now it is happening against people belonging to a different region. This whole mess was started by Bala Saheb Thakarey a few decades ago and this political minion called Raj Thackery is trying to re-ignite the old hatred against non-Maharashtrians. This happens when unjust, misguided political issues are not suppressed with brute legal force.
Many years ago immediately after the independence Sardar Vallabhai Patel consolidated various wayward states and helped build a unified India. Ever since then every Indian is free to go anywhere for the purpose of living and occupation and it is one of the fundamental rights given by our constitution. If a few Maharashtrians don’t like people from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh or for that matter Punjab coming to Mumbai and settling down there, well too bad; nothing can stop them as long as Mumbai doesn’t become a part of some other country.
I read on the Internet that the entire Mumbai film industry was wallowing in financial doldrums and it was only Amitabh Bachchan who gave hits after hits and secured the jobs of so many technicians and other workers belonging to Maharastra. What has Raj Thackeray done for Maharastra except for instigating people to commit violence and destruction? His political career in Shiv Sena took a nosedive when he allegedly got involved in a political murder. So what has he done for the betterment of Maharashtra in general and Mumbai in particular? Whatever Mumbai is today it owes everything to people from all the states.
Actually, migration happens everywhere. People move from city to city, state to state, and even country to country to seek better prospects. He says that the states from where the migrants are coming should develop enough so that the migration is reduced. Whereas it is true that Uttar Pradesh and Bihar must develop, migration to other cities and states is a natural phenomena. There are certain commercial activities that only happen in Mumbai. For instance, if a person wants to work in movies, he or she will have to go to Mumbai because the film industry is there. All major companies have set up their offices in Mumbai and when they hire people from other states those people have to come to Mumbai. So it has got nothing to do with just development; there are many other factors involved. It’s like, there are many Maharashtrians who go to the USA and other countries.
How should Raj Thackeray be treated, we were discussing this at home and Alka rightly said that he shouldn’t be arrested because then he will needlessly become a “martyr” and this will give him political advantage. Rather he should be allowed to become obscure. Violence, of course should be controlled but it should be tackled as a law and order problem and not a political problem. Calling it a political problem will needlessly make the issue important.
Personally I would suggest that the people being targeted should get together and put up a joint front. Running and cowering will get them nowhere and it will only embolden the goons. Instead they should fight back. This will not result in more violence; the threat of retaliation often maintains peace. Communities are only targeted when they seem vulnerable. You won’t find Raj Thackeray coming to Delhi or Lucknow and giving inflammatory speeches against north Indians because he knows that there people will beat the shit out of him.
Apparently the people in Uttar Pradesh are retaliating in a very novel way; they check all the trains coming from Maharastra and when they find Maharashtrian passengers in the trains they garland them, hug them and offer them sweets.
Technorati Tags: mumbai violence, raj thakeray
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
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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