Still there is hope

I had taken a virtual hiatus from writing on this blog.

Partly because of pressures of earning the daily bread and partly because after reading the newspaper in the morning and watching the news in the evening, the mind used to be almost toxic with the unending series of scams- of yet another useless politician swindling people’s money and being unabashed about it or yet another sordid case of rape of a hapless young girl, of some crocodile tears by our powerful ministers ( that would make even a crocodile squirm with jealousy).

Today morning seems to be bright. Two news items caught my attention.

Newspaper vendor from Bangalore walks into IIM-Calcutta

Sruthy Susan Ullas, TNN | May 15, 2013, 01.05 AM IST

BANGALORE: As the alarm goes off at 4am, N Shiva Kumar is up on his feet, stacking his bicycle with newspapers. He has to deliver them before the sun appears on the horizon. A habit since Class 6, Shiva's life is set to change now. Come June 16, this newspaper-boy-turned-vendor will walk down the corridors of the Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta as a PGP student……..

Rickshaw driver returns Rs 1.90 crore cheque

Bharat Yagnik, TNN | May 15, 2013, 02.52 AM IST

AHMEDABAD: An Ahmedabad auto rickshaw driver has returned Rs 1.90 crore cheque issued in his name in lieu of three bigha land acquired for Tata's Nano plant in Sanand.

Raju Bharwad could have pocketed the sum, but gave an undertaking that he was no longer the land owner. He ensured that the names of the new owners are entered in the official records……

After reading these two articles, I feel that still there is hope for this country, our utterly worthless political class and the widespread corruption notwithstanding.

Maybe I am yet another glazy eyed optimist, but unless we are optimists, can we make things change in this garbage dump that this country has been led to ? 

Apps - What ??

I use a mobile , a smart one at that- smarter than me by leaps and bounds. However my usage is limited to some photos, email access and occasional navigation. Of course this is apart from calling people, other people reaching me and messaging, which are what phones are meant for. Or what a dumb guy like me thinks that they are for ! Definitely I could use a dumber phone but like it or not, today’s phones come with a lot of smartness and each of these smart moves cost a bomb.

I do not use most of the apps. The other day when I mentioned this to a member of the younger generation (who is quite a geek) that I do not use these apps ( or for that matter have little idea what to use them for), his jaw dropped as if I have mentioned spotting a penguin in the Rajasthan desert. He was zapped : how can this zombie even lead a life without using apps ?

There are apps for everything he explained and these are mostly freebies so they have to be used ! He explained with patience that there are apps for everything from the minutest things to the most complicated. I am sure there are millions of web pages devoted to same and how to download, use , share etc.  Just browsing through the plethora of information makes you crazy….. There are apps for reminding  the disorganized to stay organized the non-networked to stay networked, the overweight to stay hungry, the forgetful to brush their teeth etc etc etc......

Oh…what’s that beep ?

Oh well, it’s an app reminding me that I must stop writing this nonsense and get back to some serious work....

Cheerio !!!

Das Capital

Lot of gigabytes and sound-bytes and reams of paper are getting spent on the recent capital punishments given to two people charged and proven in the law courts for organizing terror in this country. The mercy petitions were rejected by the President , thus triggering the executions.

As if by trigger, immediately parallel debates have opened up on the media on the need to have capital punishment in this country and counter-arguments of the need to abolish it and convert same to life imprisonment.

Let me make it very clear that my knowledge of law is similar to an Eskimos knowledge on habitats of camels on the Sahara desert. However my memory is sharp. And I would not like to have two things to happen. One, I would not like my income tax to be spent on feeding terrorists in jail. Instead I would like that to go feeding the poor and unfortunate. (It is perhaps another matter that the same too does not happen due to the lackadaisical nature of our government). Secondly I would not like innocent Rupin Katyals to lay down their lives in hands of some more terrorists so that a few more can be freed from our jails.

Strange that it may sound , taking another human life may not be exactly civilized even if it is for the execution of a hardened criminal. But we have to also remember that even if it means being crippled for life, a surgeon amputates a limb infected with gangrene and does not apply antiseptic on it instead.

Will you please shut up ??????

The last few weeks of 2012 had been a nightmare. The new year is no better, at least as yet. While we continue to have discussions on the Delhi rape case, every day more and more sordid cases of rape and molestation crop up in the news. It is really a nightmare, to say the least. Nowhere and at no other time did we feel less secure, more helpless and more agitated. The governmental machinery seem to be in a state of constant paralysis.

As if this was not enough, we have our great netas shooting off the mouth with surprising regularity. Sometimes it is some fellow asking for overcoats to school to another character talking about Bharat and India and some such gibberish and then someone talks about Park Street case – it is endless. And very next day it is the foot in the mouth disease that afflicts them. And as if this was not enough, now we have half witted godmen also giving opinions about calling rapists brothers. What next tie them a Rakhi ? And then we have Khaps....Oh my God give us a break !

Time these people realized that before making a statement they need some grey matter in their upper storey. As there was a joke, it is better to keep the mouth shut and risk people calling you a fool rather than opening the mouth and removing all doubt.

Our great netas and godmen and semi-literate Khap spokesmen and such characters better understand that.

I feel like carrying a placard and start shouting from every rooftop “Will you please shut up !!!!”

Shame is too small a word

The last few weeks of 2012 have been a nightmare. Almost on a daily basis , we wake up to sordid news of rape and mindless violence against innocent women and get too numbed to react. The protests at Delhi and in other parts of the country have made the government jittery, not knowing what to do next. And as if to fill up the time in a circus, we have half-brained mentally unstable people rambling off sentences without understanding the meaning of what they say only to mumble apologies later when it is too late. The fact that they are part of the political system and are still so hare-brained and our claim to be a civilized society make us wonder whether the end of the world is really near.

Today morning the worst which was being expected has happened. Far away in Singapore, the hapless victim, Nirbhaya, after fighting a losing battle with grit, finally decided to take leave of this sordid shameless callous world. The drama to follow can be written down to the last syllable. Our political class will rave and rant about changing the system but will actually do nothing, our Prime Minister (of whose eruditeness I have the greatest respect) will read out a prepared statement without any display of emotion or elocution, media will try to get apologies from political leaders without being successful in doing so, etc etc.

And then there will be a trial and some Human Rights Associations will start fighting against death penalty. (I do not know where are they now….).

Is this the system that we want ?

I was trying to find synonyms of the word Shame in the dictionary. Unfortunately there cannot be apt words to describe the shame we are passing through.

Let’s pray for the departed soul and the well-being and justice of thousand such hapless women who have been victims of rape and harassment due to the ineffective political and administrative will of the government and its police.

Let’s pray for a better tomorrow……..

Shame is too small a word…………

Tryst with History

I have just returned from a magical tour of the mystery of history that dates back to more than five centuries. Here are some glimpses caught on my lens:

The majestic Humayun’s tomb:

The iconic Red Fort:

The majestic Buland Darwaja- it doesn’t get bigger than this:

Mesmerizing Sikri:

The magnificent Agra Fort:

And the ultimate poetry in marble:

What is in a Name ?

The Western world has been naming hurricanes and tornadoes and typhoons for several years now. Perhaps , typical of their confident disposition, they wanted to make sure everything in their land, animate and inanimate alike, had an identity. I do not know by what basis the name is selected and whether the degree of impending disaster waiting to strike has any link with the name.

The Indian government, like a copycat , have also started to do this of late. So for a Sandy or a Billy or a Katrina, we have our share of Neelams etc. While I am sure that there is a process as laborious as any other officialese behind choosing these names and there is a huge practical justification for doing this , I have wondered what makes us name them after so commonplace names like Sandy, Billy or Neelam for that matter.

At least in India , courtesy our epics and other tales of epic proportion, we should not be short on imagination in selection of these names, which symbolize devastation. We have so many Rakshas (demons) in our mythology and since almost all of these cyclones , hurricane etc cause widespread damage and suffering to the people, we should choose from this interesting repository.

It would like comparing the havoc caused by Hidimba cyclone to the devastation created by Ghatokacha tornado. Remembering would be easy as well as interesting too.

Maybe it would be more apt then instead of trying to attach a sense of demonification to every unfortunate human named Mala or Nargis or Neelam who happened to be in the vicinity of the landfall and get caught in bind of a different kind.