My Evolution Through Time

Cynical of Democracy - Whom to blame ?

2009-05-03T12:57:00.011+01:00

Recent reports and discussions on our Main Stream Media post phase 3 of polling has been at most hilarious and Hypocritical, the appalling 44% odd polling in Mumbai has sent the Media on a fact finding mission or to be more precise, another fault finding mission ??

After 26/11 and all the Media "activism" with Jaago re , Aamir khan and all the Glamor, what we all get is a couple of percentage drop in polling over last elections :) . The fault finding mission has implicated and convicted everything that could have been possibly done The list starts from the political class , talks about the summers blames politicians again for the schedule and ends again with the political class. Every one is to blame but for the Media, and they can be really quick to in fact take credit for the 44% who exercised their right (duty ?).

I feel this is the first major success our media has had in their attempt at destroying our institutions. I feel the Media should take full blame for creating unfounded cynicism in the political class and the system, instead of trying to get people take interest in the political process the media has actually forced people to only take interest in ridiculing politics and politicians .

In the entire political process in the current general elections the media was successful in making the elections issue less when every politician in the opposition was trying to raise genuine issues of national interest the Media could only find Varun Gandhi as a worthwhile issue to hog prime time space, they could only pick up the "My daddy Strongest" rhetoric of all poll issues, they could only find the nose of a certain Priyanka Gandhi of prime time interest (is she even a primary member of a political party ? ) , of 48 pages of a manifesto , an IT vision , an Infrastructure Vision, all the media could find is a paragraph on Cultural Humanism worthwhile of debate, of Hour long political speeches what only enthused the media was a drunken man flinging projectiles aimlessly.

Where were the issues which actually people could relate to, where was the debate on which political formation had a better vision / plan to get India out of the terrible economic crisis we are going through , where was the debate on food price inflation, where was the debate on unemployment, Infrastructure, development, Internal security, external threats. Why wasn't the sadak, bijli Pani given the importance it deserved ?

When Varun Gandhi spoke of nationalism and forgetting about caste identities (after release on parole) where was the same media which hounded him for a fortnight when he allegedly made communal remarks ??

Kudos to the Media for its success in demonising Politics and politicians as a class and giving democracy a body blow.

NSA on the Media ?

2009-04-06T17:13:00.005+01:00

Indian politics has always been interesting, but the media coverage of specific aspects of our polity has made it ever more fascinating, and if i look at my blog most of my recent posts seem to have centered around the media which, believe me, is purely unintentional, somehow the media has been able to evoke the strongest emotions in me lately.

Now this post is about the alleged "Hate Speech" by Mr Varun Gandhi and the events leading to his arrest and subsequent imposition of the "National Security Act", as his actions were considered to have endangered national Security.

Recollecting the sequence of events, this is what has happened -

1) Varun Gandhi makes the alleged hate speech at a Pilibhit rally attended by a few 100 people, apparently the speech is recorded by someone. (we have no idea about the identity of this "someone")
2) For the next 12 odd days things are as normal as they always have been in Pilibhit and the rest of the country, no signs of communal disturbance reported or attributed to Mr Gandhi
3) Suddenly a CD appears which is directly sent to the main stream media by "someone" (Now this "someone" can be the same "someone" referred to in point 1 above or can also be "someone" else, the identity of any of the "someones's" not yet known.
4) Now every one in the country can see the alleged speech 24X7 , and it is played and replayed over and over again by our active Media.
5) Now instead of one of the "someones's" mentioned above the EC asks the media for the CDs.
6) In a couple of days the EC assumes the role of the judiciary and pronounces Varun Gandhi Guilty.
7) Varun Gandhi courts arrest in Pilibhit and by now thanks to the media everyone in the world has heard the speech, and there is a show of support for Varun Gandhi , also there are reports of rioting.
8) The UP govt declares Varun Gandhi a threat to the Nation and charges him Under NSA.

In view of the above there are 2 distinct possibilities -
a) The CD was doctored as proclaimed by Varun Gandhi

This clearly makes the Media guilty of playing a fabricated Video over and over again leading to communal tensions and a possible threat to national security.

b) The CD was not doctored and Varun Gandhi actually made the speech.

In this case Varun Gandhi is guilty of delivering this speech to a few hundred people, with apparently no effect as there is no word of anything happening in the 12 days since the alleged speech was made.

Logically speaking even here the Media is guilty of showing a hate speech over and over again on national TV in an attempt to raise communal passions directly responsible for the kind of rioting seen in pilibhit and endangering National Security.

So, in my unbiased view,either way, based only on the facts listed above the real threat to national Security and maybe to our nation has been our Main Stream Media, Shouldn't it be charged under NSA ?

The Fifth Estate

2009-03-21T10:58:00.009Z

Media as an industry, post liberalization has grown enormously over the last couple of decades and so has its influence on the other "Pillars" of democracy over the years. It has had its success in making the judiciary , the legislature and the executive a lot more accountable and even forced them into action in quite a few instances , the apparent influence on the Jessica Lal case or the Nitish Katara case in recent years has been largely attributed to Media activism, for which the media has received due credit.

Any kind of mindless, uninhibited, exponential and unregulated growth has historically always led to disaster , the current state of our global economy is testament to this universal truth, even our "Free" Media is proving to be no exception, the fall in standards of reporting especially of the 24X7 electronic media, driven by the obvious constraints of profitability has led to an increased need of sensationalism, a need to create news where there isn't any and the ever increasing tendency of leading journalists to report news more as their own personal/their masters views which they hope all will subscribe to.

The developments post 26/11 and the rhetoric created by our Media was somewhat reminiscent of the Bond flick "Tomorrow Never Dies", our Media was "almost" successful in engineering a War, and had it happened, it would have been just the boost our Media houses would have needed to beat the recession ! Its simple logic if a 3 day gunfight can create the kind of hysteria we witnessed , 3 month war is just what the doctor ordered ?.. and then our brave journalists would take reality TV to its zenith standing in the line of fire and laying their claim to martyrdom bringing the war (created by them) as it happens when it happens straight to you ... "Whatever it Takes" ,and who knows maybe another couple of these "Brave" men and women decorated with padmashrees.

Isn't this a Dream come true for a Media house listed on our stock exchanges which have to show numbers at the end of every 3 months ?

And even talking about the recent cases like Arushi Talwar or the unabashedly biased political reporting we are subject to, with every media entity serving their bosses and personal agendas, is a bit too trivial in view of the above.

Now when the Pillar of our democracy which is supposed to check and question the other pillars, itself starts behaving in the way it is today, maybe its time for a fifth estate which undoubtedly in the next generation will be the internet and more specifically online blogging / social networks. This will potentially be the most democratic "pillar" where each one us has their say, and when all say the same in one voice it will be more and more difficult to ignore such opinions.

Even though it is still in what i can say a nascent stage of development, already there are signs of it establishing itself ever so slowly, the classic case of Barkha Dutt/NDTV vs C Kunte (apparently a lone helpless blogger who chose to say what he felt) and was subsequently bullied and forced to retract, what followed over the next month on the Blogosphere is testimony to the growing strength of this 5th Pillar of our democracy.

For those who haven't heard of this case which has been largely ignored by our mainstream media ( apparently in a bid to protect themselves and their clan from the inevitable), a simple google search on "Barkha Dutt" will show you loads of stuff on this case. I am linking to a couple of the articles here for your convenience.

The Hoot - The actual post by C Kunte and subsequent apology
Rakesh Jhunjunwala - My favouritehe re take on this :)

Now i wont get into the merits of the case as its already been dissected to the core all over
the blogosphere, I just have 2 points to put here -

1) When the head of state of the most powerful country of the world can be the single most abused person on the blogosphere who *** **** is Barkha Dutt !
2) This has been a PR disaster , and the irony is they are the same people who are adept at creating larger than life heroes from no where and maligning people with whom they or their masters have a "difference in opinion"

With politicians already taking cognizance of the potential influence on the 5th estate with some serious online campaigning been done by the BJP (http://friendsofbjp.org) , including providing participative platforms for creating agendas for governance (http://lkadvani.in) the ball is already rolling.

The Influence as of now hasn't yet been threatening to the 4th estate , but i am confident with time and growth of the "5th estate" we are in for interesting times.

2 years Since .. another time another day ...another Blast

2008-09-20T00:10:00.006+01:00

A couple of years ago, i was pretty much in a similar setup as I am today, away from home, alone, with nothing much to do. Then something had happened which made me write this -
Survival ... The Basic Instinct , that was an expression of angst i felt following the orchestrated blasts on the Mumbai locals, within a span of 11 minutes a series of explosions led to the death of 200 innocent fellow Indians along with 700 odd injured many of them probably disabled for life. I had talked about a kind of Inertia that i felt had set in, in our response to such acts of mindless terror and hoped our basic survival instincts will make us rise from that slumber and bring about a change.

More than 2 years and numerous similar incidents later i only find my angst being replaced by helplessness, it is amazing to look back and see myself react over every such incident whether be it Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Delhi .... its almost become a routine, you hear about the incident, call up family and friends in that city, check if alls well, express your angst on this , talk, debate , discuss over and over again forget the incident in a weeks time ... maybe a fortnight and repeat the same when the next time terror strikes. This time it was Delhi ... my city but thankfully "My" people were all safe and sound who cares about the 22 others who lost their lives to another dastardly act of senseless violence.

The problem i see today is that we in India don't value human life as much as people across the world do, big deal if a few hundreds get killed out of a billion plus ... thats the attitude i see across the socio political spectrum in India , be it the common man , the politician or the government.

Today Human rights are more important than Human life. Teesta Setalvad is more important than Inspector M C Sharma, the home minister of our country says "action will be taken against the culprits as per the law" and tries to ensure there arent any laws in the first place. The prime minister of the country doesnt say anything and soniaji visits the hospitals and "condemns" the blast. Mr Rajdeep Sardesai (among the top journalists in India) says "laws are not detterents" and "laws not required, as crminals will still go ahead and commit crime" and conveniently forgets that inspite of convictions under the laws of the land the convicted is still being saved the gallows by our political and 'activist' class .. Our security agencies with 302 rifles and a khakhi half sleeve shirt are expected to ambush militants with AK47s and bullet proof jackets, And obviously arent given the luxury of being pro active in nabbing doubtful elements in the society as it might upset a few Human(Terrorists) Rights Activists

Is there hope ? i really dont have an answer , we are where we were 2 years ago, maybe in an even worse condition today .... that external force, probably hasn't been strong yet to get us out of our inertia ... but till when can things be the way they are ... when will we start valuing human life ... only time will tell ... as of now .. today ... i feel just a sense of helplessness !!

The Hindu Rate of growth

2008-08-22T23:40:00.013+01:00

I remember the times as a small kid living in an upmarket 'Bombay' locality, where I shared my apartment block with the likes of Indrani mukherjee, Harmesh Malhotra (Nagina fame), Asha Parekh and my neighbourhood with Sunil Dutt/Nargis Dutt , Dilip Kumar and Saira Banu, had friends who were kids of the rich and famous, went to the school which had Aaamir Khan as its alumni and paid 5 /- a month as fees. Till the time my height became a bit too obstructive for my dad to ride comfortably and we could afford a second hand maruti ( for a whopping 50000/-), The mode of tranport for my family of 4 was an original Vespa (1958 Model) which ferried us for years from Pali Hill in Bandra to Vashi in New Bombay

This was the last decade of what I call the Nehruvian legacy, After 40 years of socialism , there still were the haves and the havenots, and then there were us, "something in the middle & something in between" , the lucky few whose dad's had jobs with those prestigious public sectors financial institutions which had assets in the most posh localities, but operationally were just in line with the Hindu rate of growth, and so were the salaries and growth opportunities.

I was surely among the lucky ones,for me, I have always believed, the standard of life then, when my dad supported his family on a meager salary of less than 10K as a manager was better than what most people can ever have today. In spite of the big bucks just out of college grads make , most will never afford living in the same apartment, I was brought up in.

Probably Nehru had dreamed of an India where most would have been as lucky as i was, but unfortunately that did not or maybe could not have happened, those public sectors even after a good 40 years could be counted on your fingertips and therefore provide employment for maybe not even a % of the Indian populace, and that is where Nehru and later his successors failed to estimate growth rates which would have been required to provide equal opportunities to most. Our economy was growing at around 2 - 3 % whereas other Asian capatalist economies were booming led by japan and then followed by the south east asian economies , Korea and China.

And this, instead of bringing in equality and even distribution of wealth, in fact led to a widening of the Gap between the haves and the have nots, with the rich, who could "manage" the license raj getting richer, the priviledged educated elite who could land jobs in the public sector , Govt , administration or the bureaucracy a respectable lifestlye (though not much money to show) and the rest, the majority with almost nothing. Maybe the Green revolution of the late 60's / 70's was the only saviour for the large agricultural economy on which India survived those decades.

The key was to create millions of jobs, which never happened in the controlled License raj era and left a generation of unemployed undereducated Indians who form todays caste and class ridden Indian middle class who feel let down by the nation in not been given an equal opportunity to grow along with their few lucky countrymen.

I have been lucky and fortunate have been born in the era which witnessed the transition of India from the stifled growth decades of the 80's and early 90's to the era of the open markets today, its true, for me, i might never get to stay in apartment block on Nargis Dutt road in Pali Hill, but am happy for the millions of my countrymen who atleast have a job today and an opprtunity to change their and our country's fortune.

Only if we had started the process in the 50's along with the Japans of the world ...

वाह रे मेरा भारतवर्ष

2008-08-18T22:06:00.009+01:00

cnn ibn reports -

.....................................
"Hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani on Monday demanded the merger of Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan"

Addressing a mammoth gathering at the tourist reception centre here (Srinagar), Gillani said there was "no solution to the Kashmir issue other than merger with Pakistan".

"We are Pakistanis and Pakistan is us because we are tied with the country through Islam," he roared, as the crowd cheered him and chanted: "Hum Pakistani hain, Pakistan hamara hai" (We are Pakistanis, Pakistan is ours).

....................................

And our media is proud of it .... Syed Ali Shah Geelani is still a free man .... free to address as many such rallies as he wishes .... today it is kashmir ... tomorrow will be hyderabad ....and then amdabad ... after all we are a democracy ... you know Modi with a 2/3rds majority in the Vidhan Sabha is a bigger threat there (Source: Our very own ... Intellectual media )

we are proud to be a democracy .... proud to be an Indian ...

Just compare this with our neighbours ... 2 Brits deported from Beijing ... in front of full International media glare ... the same day they were found with a "free Tibet" bannner ....

a few votes in our democracy are more important than our territorial integrity ..... and for our media this is just another masala news item which should be displayed proudly on the home page .... who needs traitors here ...

वाह रे मेरा भारतवर्ष ...

Kumble and the fab 4

2008-08-16T22:28:00.006+01:00

If anyone has won more tests single handedly for India ... theres no doubt in my mind it has to be kumble ... for the last 18 odd years this guy who ... for the for the first half of his career fooled batsmen by claiming to be a leg break bowler and then after his shoulder injury actually started to spin the ball both ways when no one expected it would spin .... he has proved beyond doubt he will always be one of the all time greatest cricketers ever to have played for India.

If anyone deserved to be captain of India for the last decade and a half ... based on pure performance and dedication ... again undoubtedly it should have been kumble .... and when it was time to maybe hang his boots ... on a high .... he was crowned "The captain" and given the "fab 4" in his team .... what an irony ... these have been the very guys who over the years overshadowed whatever kumble did .... 1 sachin century in a tame draw was always hailed greater than a match winning 4 wickets by kumble in the final session to win a test .... and today these are the people who themselves will never retire gracefully (will have to be kicked out ) ... and not let the great that Kumble is to go the way he should .....

p.s1 lately if anyone has been winning tests for India is Sehwag without doubt ..... when will sachin , dravid , ganguly , laxman realize their time is over !!
p.s2 I am told that Sachin "refused" to take the responsibility and the Indian Board couldn't find anyone to take the Job after Dravid stepped down ... now was it actually an honor for Kumble or just convenience on the part of the Indian board ?

Its Different ..

2008-08-16T21:54:00.006+01:00

I frequent the ibn live blogs , not exactly for the quality of posts there or even the insight they provide on a gamut of issues that our nation faces ... but probably more to guage the level to which the Hippocratic bias of front line Indian intellectual media (read ndtv/cnn-ibn and the likes) can get to ....and more to go through the comments section rather than the actual post :) ..

To my surprise today i came across a very subjective post ... which talks about actual governance on the ground and keeps itself away from the Hippocratic pseudo secular line that you will come across more often ...

Surely one of the few good reads you will find there -

cnnibn - different blog

and enclosing one of the typical ones "just to tell the difference" :)

cnnibn - typical blog

:)

My new address on the World Wide Web ...

2008-08-16T12:51:00.003+01:00

Being consistent with changing times ... and evolving through time ... which has been the theme of my Blog since Monday Feb 20 2006, I have now migrated to Google .

Being one of the strongest proponents of Google , its technology and vision, I should have been doing this a long time back ... and well ... I indeed had .... its just that i have become a bit too lazy to actually do a "cut over" (As we say as per the standard migration process) , so here .. on the 16th Of August 2008 completely move from O3 at Indiatimes to here ...

My previous posts will remain available at - http://o3.indiatimes.com/someramblings , though i have not been a prolific writer in any sense of the word , but whatever little bit i write going forward will be here .... till evolution again demands change

Update : 10/05/2009

I found a way to Migrate my earlier posts to Blogger , so all my posts are available here also.

something has changed ....

2008-08-16T05:10:00.000+01:00

There was a time (not that long ago) when i had lots of time ...and i had to find ways to make use of it ,and today looks like days have shortened ... do we still have the same 24 Hrs a day which i had 3 years back ? things have changed .... life has changed ..... maybe even priorities have .... , when i had started off my career in the technology space .... some 5 years back ... I always belived that i am the one whos working the most and making all the $s for my company .... today i feel i am the one whos slogging it out and these juniors just out of college just dnt want to work ..... now is this just a perspective or a different generation a different mindset .... i dont knw ... all i knw that when i thot i slogged a lot 5 yrs back i had a lot of time to forward junk to the world ... be 24X7 online ........ write blogs .... be active on the social network ... play cricket ... play TT .... go to gym (once in a while ie) ... get into a volleyball game ... roam around the chennai beaches ... . be involved with socio political groups ... be part of change ... try to influence change and what not ... if i look down ... just the last 5 years i can see what it is ....... is it just abt getting practical with all your experiences ... with time you get your priorities right (now who knws 5 yrs down the line i might think otherwise) .... u understand yourself and your environment ....what you can do and what is beyond urself .... it is something like a couple of years back in a similar setup i was away frm India and there were those ghastly bomb blasts in the mumbai subarban train network .... I was shocked angered and wanted to change the world ... today I am again somewhere far off and i hear of bombs going off at the same Bus stops in bangalore where I had waited for my bus to e-city 100's of times ...and I just dont get that same feeling i had 2 years back ... i know nothing can change and nothing will change ... that spark ...that exuberance.... that hope .. seems to be deserting me ....Today the only passion i see ... offcourse other than cricket :) ... is my job .. my work, why has so much changed in the last year or so .... maybe its just that i am getting married .... i know its not right ... but its imminent ..... what i always feared is coming true ... once u get married have a family you ... the selflessness starts diminishing and the selfishnes begins ... i know its coming .... i knw its happening ... and i know it happens to most .... but i always thought i am diffrent ... the question i need to ask myself is ... what makes me change ... why cant i be my real self as i was B4 .... why cant i still find time to do what i always did ... why cant i still play the games i loved ...why cant i keep thinking big .... why cant i spare time for firends .... why cant i just be online as used to be before !!

Cricket ..... lives on ...

2007-10-04T23:04:00.000+01:00

Now i had to write this one .... after the relatively depressing post ....post the 5050 wc exit i had to write this one , theres no way cricket is anywhere near death ... the way hockey reinvented itself when it was being dominated by India ... by gettin in the astro turf .... cricket has found a way to get over aussie dominance ..... cut short the game make it more unpredictable !!! .... a masterstroke i feel .. though not tooo great a newz for other sports in India ...

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini -- A review

2007-09-13T22:04:00.000+01:00

Stuck in my ofc waiting for the rain gods to give way .... just happened to browse past my now neglected blog , and as always am thinking of excuses .... instead lemme do smthg which i havnt tried my hand at .... a "book review"
The most recent book i happened to read ... by accident, courtesy my cousins unscheduled visit not only to bangalore but subsequently to a book store here ... i happened to notice this one , i had recently heard a friend talk abt .... " The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini ...
The story line is really touching and the setting in the 60's to the mid 80's in afganistan is really well done .... goin thru the book page after page u get the feel of actually being there and get ... kind of a first hand experience of the socio political situation of afghanistan during the those turbulent times .... now i cant really get into the literary aspects to the writing as i dont consider myself competent enuf to do that ..... but its the kind of story which engrosses u .... makes u experience a spectre of feelings ... of angst, of helplessness, of envy, of pride, of friendship, of love, of devotion and what not .... all in all a complete novel ..... u just cant put down ...
The pro american touch throughout the book is quite expected given the fact that the author had been given political assylum by the US during most turbulent times in afghanistan .....
The period and the events covered by "the kite runner" probably still has a very huge influence on the socio political scene across the world including india even today ...
so ****** and a biiiiiiiiig reco frm me :)

The return of the Blogger...Evolving Thoughts

2007-04-26T15:09:00.000+01:00

You would have noticed that I am back with a bang on my blog after a gud 10 months :D ... now setting the record straight on this it can only be attributed to my current status of employment ... and i'm loving it !!
life has been great over these months .... and learnings ever so , after travelling across probably the most inhospitable places on earth over the last year (atleast of whatever little I hav seen in this short life) and another year of added experience :) ,there has been quite a change in the way I see things .... My initial obsession with doing something to change the way things work here in India have come a full circle , being involved with a lot of "like minded" ppl , seeing the way things work away from home has made me realize that the vast country that India is with all its cultural / regional diversity and the way the political democratic system works here .... there is little that can be done by an individual, and its not attributed the fact that we dont have the will to do it or the ability , it comes from the very fact that coming to a consensual agreement on any issue of national importance in this nation even among the educated elite is near impossible and the fact is everyone seems to be right the way they see things, and if you add to it the aspirations of the larger populace of the vast uneducated India it gets even worse. And trying to do anything you deem correct will only be imposing your school of thought over a vast majority !!
India as such is correctly called a sub continent, it surely cant be one nation with a common culture , a common history and a common vision , and the fact that we still have been able to co exist can only be called an extraordinary achievement of all of us which I would rather controversially attribute to the Hindu way of life which is predominant in our country otherwise ther is no reason we would have been another europe with every state being a nation in its own right.
Now coming to the larger question , what is our future ?? I belive the media and and the Information revolution in the decades to come willl play a huge role in either integrating India into a common culture or on the other side if it gets a bit irresponsible ... might as well lead to a disintegration .... as both these forces do exist .. it will depend on which one is flashed across .... common national achievements in the world stage will play an important part .... Judicial activism as they call it is the first impact the media has been able to achieve ... and its a positive start , for any society forceful control is the precursor to creating a general positive cultural control ... and the judiciary has a role toplay here ..and to keep it in check ... it comes back to the media to exert the correct kind of pressure ...
But again coming to the first point made .... the real challenge will be actually coming to consensual agreements of major issues which plague our country and with so many perspectives thru which any issue can be viewed will make it ever so difficult .... but then again we have been moving ahead for the last 60 yrs even though very slowly there should not be any reason why it wont continue ...

Climate Change - the Inevitable

2007-04-26T12:36:00.001+01:00

There has been a lot of debate recently about how Human activity has led to a dramatic change in world climate and how such changes ... being irreversible will forever change things for the worse ..
Now whether this change is for the better or for the worse ... is maybe debatable , what is not is that change is inevitable !! .... had it not been for such changes dinosours wouldnt have gone and probably we as Homo Sapiens wouldnt have evolved ... for dinosours change was for the worse ... for humans maybe for the better. Change is something that will happen ... whether we as Humans contribute or not is a different story .... There is a lot of talk about the legacy we will be leaving for our children and future generations ... I just dont understand this when we all know that our planet earth is doomed by astronomical facts ... so if that end comes a few generations earlier or later shouldnt concern us all that much...
For me the best possible legacy we can leave to future generations can only be scientic research and development through which hopefully we can reach a stage where inhabiting space becomes a possibility and for that if u need too pump in all the more CFCs or CO2 ... so be it , and if we cant do that .. we should live life the best we can and enjoy it till it lasts .. slowing down indutrial growth and technology innovation just to preserve the climate for a few more years really doesnt help.
My firm belief is ... as we have evolved over generations ... our future generations will also evolve .... and adapt to the climatic conditions they face at their time ...if they cant as darwin said they will and should perish.
And finally the ultimate fact remains unless we move out from our planet ... our days our numbered!!

The Rahul Bose style of humour ....

2007-04-16T20:37:00.000+01:00

there have been a plethora of filmy(bollywood) award functions all over tv in recent times and I have been made to go thru quite a few of them ... txs to my roomie ... i was surprised at the nominations and awards being doled out in most of these ... we had nominations for among the worst films of the yr ... if screen had a fondness for Vivah ... which was nominated for every category possible , filmfare had a soft corner for KANK ... which as per my view should be close contenders for the worst film of the year .....
though there were a few deserved ones like RDB and Lage raho .... I was surprised not to find even a cursory nomination for Pyar ke side efects which in my view was among the best entertainers of the year .... another one of rahul bose's classic jhankaar beats which came a few years back also doesnt find the kind of appreciation that that kind of humour .. i feel deserves ..... or is it me only who has ...what do u call it ... a weird sense of humour ??

My Passion for Cricket ... has the end come ???

2007-04-15T19:55:00.000+01:00

after Indias dismall performance in the carribean there was a recent discussion with friends and fellow cricket buffs ... , many were of the view ... wht a waste of time following cricket .... especially the way we follow .... ball by ball till the last ball is bowled :) .... the general view was that cricket is for retired ppl who dont have anything better to do !! ..... logically speaking sounds pretty true ... who in this fast paced world can afford to put in 8 hrs often bunking work ... sitting in the canteen or even goin to the extent of taking an off from work ..... to watch this stupid game !! ... and in that respect India crashing out from the super 8's has indeed been a blessing in disguise for a atleast a few who can now do that “somethg better”.
After that discussion which led to a surprisingly unanimous conclusion ....i just thought for a while ..... what can that “something better” be in my case , which i'll do instead of watching the next India Pak ODI whenever that happens or even the 17 or so ODI' s India is supposed to play against Aus this year of which I am pretty sure we will lose a min of 15 ...
Only then I realized that if there is anything near what ppl call “passionate about“ .... cricket beats the 2nd second most by miles ... and it has been that way atleast since 1987 when I was 7 years old ... my big bro told me that India will play pakistan in the finals of something called a cricket world cup .... I didnt know much about cricket then ... just that India was the world champions having won the last world cup and also the world championship .... off which I have faint images of seeing Shastri winnig the champions of champions trohpy and along with that an Audi ..... with the complete cricket team on top of it after the presentations ..... India never played pakistan in that final with both losing in the semis .... and Inidia been done in by one Graham Gooch century ... that was the first time Australia won a world cup and for sure it wudnt be their last !!
actually cricket was not the first sport to have captured my imagination ... it was sometime in the summer of 1986 when we had recently got a new - second hand color TV ... my bro and father were quite excited about the prospect of a 16 or so yr old lad taking on one Ivan lendl whom i distinctly remember my brother calling him the best in business at that time .... I really had no real idea what this sport of tennis was all about .... but since my entire family was glued to the TV set that evening .... i was witness to history, I still distinctly remeber the setting that day ... in our pali hill flat , with the TV at one corner of the drawing room and me lying on the diwan at the opposite end , and believe me I had just turned 6 then ! I have imgaes inscribed in memory of Boris Becker flying all over the court taking impossible volleys and generating non geometric angles on them .... that very day i fell in love with the sport and Boris becker was my hero and he still is .... I remember playing against the wall with piece of wood and a tennis ball .... something I quite later realized resempled squash more than tennis ... but for me I was then the invinsible Becker and the wall were all his comtemporaries :) ... my love for the sport later bloomed following another great ... steffi graf , her calm demeanour and composure and that deadly forehand over the excrutiatingly noisy Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and later monica seles ... whon i hated from the bottom of my heart !! .... and this love affair culminated at the wimbledon of 1989 when Boris Becker and Steffy graf won the singles titles in the same year ....
But once my heroes were gone .. i hv never been as passionate about tennis as i was once upon a time ... and the sheer dominance of federer has further eroded the charm ...... my Passion for cricket has lasted longer and today if I lose that, there will surely be a void .... difficult to fill .... and the dominance of Australia over the last decade akin to that of Federer ... and Indias reluctance/inability to move ahead .... has all the ingredients to bring an end to what can easily be said as my only love today !! ...

Survival ... the Basic instinct

2006-07-13T20:28:00.000+01:00

Being in the place I am, among all its constraints and restrictions, is my compulsion to watch CNN world endlessly.... there isn’t another English language channel around :( ,

Of what i had heard of CNN ... of its being a US propaganda mouthpiece is not far from wrong.. you find most of the reports bragging about what the US is doing ... on the War on terror in Iraq ....or how will the highly advanced missile defense system can track a north Korean missile launch, inform Bush about it within x secs , get a decision in y secs and shoot it down in z secs :) ... i cant comment on how biased the reporting actually is …. as there aint any way to verify out here ....but for sure CNN takes pride in being American and I see nothing wrong in that … now looking at the positives .... Which I have started doing more often than not since landing in this god forsaken place J ..... my knowledge on international affairs is better than it has ever been ...

It was one of those days .... back from another hectic day at office ... i reluctantly switched on the tv having nothing better to do .... And as usual it was preset at CNN.... but this certainly wasnt like any of those days.... the face that appeared was our very own Rajdeep Sardesai ... and the coverage wasn’t a normal CNN world coverage .... what i was seeing was a Breaking Story … a live coverage on the very familiar CNN-IBN ... the story of those 11 minutes that rocked Mumbai .... Leaving around 200 dead and more than 700 injured..... and more importantly once again reinforcing the uncertainty of life.

Death off course is inevitable, but survival is often considered as the basic instinct of any living species and when we talk about ourselves.... the Homo Sapiens.... its complete evolution to this day has been fiercely driven by this very instinct.... there has been a constant Endeavour in this direction .... through developing basic tools out of stone for self defence against wild animals to developing the best of medical procedures to fight death ...predictablity is the hall mark of any develpoed society .... be it about the weather forecast or your life !!

Darwin provided us with the mantra of survival ... survival of the fittest ... only those will survive who adatp and change according to your changing environments .... newton another great told us of inertia ... a body at rest tends to be at rest until an external force is applied .... for us I believe the external force has been applied a bit too often in recent years and its overdue to get out of Inertia .... and get fitter if we need to survive as a sovereign nation.... we no longer can afford to be a soft nation and a soft target for such acts of indiscriminate violence ....

This is not the first time such a dastardly act has been committed in Mumbai .... the culprits of the 1993 blasts still roam around freely .... organize weddings at the grandest of scales under full media coverage and we and our authorities are still trying to prove that that person exists .... we need to to do an Israel or a KGB or a CIA or even and ISI ..... track each one of those associated with such acts and if need be even get them assanitaed !! ... the point is that the message should be loud and clear that no one will be spared .... if the US can ravage an entire nation to search out one person .... or Israel can launch attacks to search out one of its soldiers ... why are we so soft ..... Why the only statement that our PM can make is 'stay calm' ....

There are schools of thought that talk about motives and rationale of such attacks ... but for me killing of innocents is the greatest act of terror that is possible and beyond any kind of mercy .. and as a friend of mine says "Till the time violent groups strike at such soft targets...till the time they keep on killing innocent civilians just because every act of terror gives them 10000 rupees, they will remain to be called Terrorists...the day they get their target right they will become freedom fighters and nationalists " … read more about these views at http://tedioustedium.blogspot.com/

People today are talking about the spirit of Mumbai and how two days later those very trains are packed again ... but does that mean we don’t care ??? does that mean that this will be one more incident that will keep moving down the pages of our papers and one day forgotten till another similar incident happens ??? if things stay the way they are this is what is exactly going to happen this time round too .... the inertia of our govt machinery that has set in is too high for such "SMALL" incidents to shake ....

Why are we as a nation like this, what makes us so soft .... what makes us to accept things as they are .... When will the time come when we will learn to protect our honour .... our lives and that tooo with authority ... when will the time come when we as a Nation will assert ourselves ??? when will we have our very own CNN !!! i guess no one has the answers now .... but surely the time will come when every indian will start asking these questions and then we will see a revolution !!!! .... just hope that I manage to SURVIVE till then .....to witness the new India ...

Evolution Of Nations ....

2006-06-21T19:37:00.000+01:00

Staying with the current theme of my posts ... and my most recent experiences , or more aptly u can say my recent observations of a society, which has transformed itself from a war ravaged, under developed nation not so long ago .to arguably a developed society today. Now I have used the word 'Arguably' cause the only people who insist that they are still a developing nation are Koreans themselves :) and that has more to do with protecting their Agricultural sector from WTO regulations of free trade ... than what actually is they would like to believe :)

For a person like me ...who gets his dal roti by keeping track of what is happening around the world of telecom , the first country to commercially launch DMB (Digital Media Broadcasting) or in simple terms TV on ur cell phone .... can't be anything but developed ... and to add to that being the home of giants like Samsung ,LG, Hyundai et all further corroborates the claim ... and if I tell u that a Hyundai sonata is used as an 'ordinary taxi' ... the very car which till recently was a status symbol in my homeland India .... I think few there will have doubts regarding South Koreas developed status....

Now this post wasn’t meant to debate whether or not Korea is developed .... but my intention here is dwell a bit more to try and understand .... what did Seoul do in the last 2 - 3 decades to completely transform itself ...me being an ordinary bloke .... and no expert on such subjects can speak based on a laymans observation ...

the first impression that I got after just a couple of days in office was that these chaps (Koreans) .... are the most workaholic race of people I have ever come across .... not that I have interacted with every race in the world ... but this observation is based on my experience of working with Europeans .... and accounts from friends about the Americans .... though I’ve heard Japanese are quite similar in nature ...... but then isn’t Japan also a relatively recent success story ?? ...

so people here in Korea put in real long hours of work ... and by long hours I actually mean long working hours ... unlike a few of us Indians .... including me .... who stay in office for 14 hrs a day .... of which 8 are spent in getting in a mood to work and the rest 6 actually working :) ... now what keeps these chaps going ?? my best guess is a real high dose of nicotine and weekend bouts of booze....I am yet to meet a single Korean male who doesn’t smoke !! ...

and its not just their slogging like dogs that catches your eye ... its the amazing sense of self discipline which for me makes them stand out ... be it using only the Zebra crossings and waiting for the traffic signal to cross a road .... to waiting for a subway in a station .... it’s amazing to see how these ppl queue up on the designated arrows on the platform .... which mark the edges where the train gates will open .... wait patiently till every one gets down and board the subway in a queue ... it’s actually an wonderful scene ... hundreds on mini queues formed on the platform waiting for the train to come .... and then you won’t believe it .... they also have a protocol for using the escalators .... Koreans being the workaholics they are ... more often than not, there will be many people in a hurry who can’t wait for the escalator to go on its own pace .... so what do these ppl do ? ... its an unwritten rule that ppl who don’t intend to walk up/down the escalator will stand only on the right extreme of the escalator ... leaving the left for ppl who want to be on the move .... amazing !! .... every thing looks orderly here .... with processes not only well defined but also followed in the right spirit ....... I can go on and on with similar examples ..... but i guess you got the jist ..

It won’t be true if I say every Korean is the same, there is a sizeable young hep crowd around .... making merry and spending big time apparently what their parents have earned the hard way ..... but again as in most successful and developed societies .... it is just one or two generations that give the entire society a push ...and the coming generations just ride the wave ,already having a well set platform ..... it was the case be it the US or the UK or Europe .... wherein the generations of the late 1700's and thru the1800's brought about the Industrial revolution .... giving those societies a head start which they enjoy till date ....now ppl in Europe don’t stay in office beyond 5 now !!

As they say history repeats itself .... Japan saw a similar period in the 60's to 80's transforming their society ...... and Korea from probably the 80's till date .... for Korea it’s the current generation and the last one which has done the hard work .... and its time for the next to enjoy it!! .... China maybe is on its way ....

Now again ..... the question which led me to write all this is when will we get to these levels .... when will India get its generation that will make its mark ?? .... for many it’s already come .... they say that this current generation has it to take our gr8 nation to greater heights .... but I personally am still skeptical , to transform a society ... the push should come from a majority of our population .... it’s just not possible that a handful of industrialists and techies can do it ....and if this is the case the results can actually be disastrous ...creating an ever widening rift b/w the different classes of people .... What we need in my view is a revolution ... a revolution of knowledge .... of education .... of conscience .....of nationalism ....of self discipline... which penetrates the deepest of roots ..... we need to inculcate these very values which act as catalysts to growth among ourselves ....creating the will to excel among each and every Indian is the need of the hour ... and all this is possible ... primarily thru an infrastructure of effective primary education which reaches the grass roots and inculcates such values from a very early age ... only then we can actually think of crossing the hurdle ....

What stops us from doing this ??? what are the solutions to this problem ?? I still don’t have answers .... maybe with time , experiences , observations , a few answers might unravel themselves .... and as soon as I come to some reasonable understanding .... based on my average intellect levels .... will try to pen them down in this space sometime later ....

Evolving Thoughts ......

2006-06-12T20:23:00.000+01:00

Now this has been another looong gap since I had written last .... there have been so many things that have been happening all around me ... life is moving a bit too fast for my liking .... but then if i think of the positives the learning curve for me over the last two months has been a lot steeper than it has been in a very long time .... and this is not only abt learning in the sense of what i hav been upto professionally .... but a lot more in the direction which has .... i believe made me a lot more mature as a person ..... and my active association with Bharat Uday Mission in bangalore over this period has a lot to do with this...

So i will try to start off from where I left last .....The initial euphoria and rhetoric about being part of a revolution and changing the face of the nation (a new world order ??) ...died its natural death as was expected and the realization about the actual ground situation came fast ... the challenges that lie ahead , the hurdles ... internal contradictions ... differences in opinion ...ego clashes ... there were ppl who walked out .... and then there were new enthusiastic ppl who walked in ...but what is important is ... whatever the differences in opinion about the path to follow ... the objective and the final destination among all of us is clear ....

Over the last two months I had the opportunity to interact with many people from across the country and abroad under the BM banner .... some interactions were pleasant and some not so pleasant .... but the learning’s from these have been immense .... the intricacies of group dynamics could never have been more apparent ... the realization that what you feel and what you believe will not always be what the team you are working with will agree too ... and more importantly there can be some one who has a better perspective and a point of view ..... I have been working in Teams in the s/w industry for round 3 years now .... but believe me its never the same when you work in a team which is formed, based purely on a common vision with no one in the group having anything personal to gain .... walking out on a difference of opinion in your professional career is not an option .... but in case of a group like BM it is the easiest and there lies the challenge .... to keep yourself motivated and synergize your efforts together even when you have a different view and even when you dont gain anything personally ...... that is the ultimate test of selfless work and the biggest challenge.

Not long ago I strongly believed that the cure of all the ills of our Indian society is simple .... you just need to be ruthless .... maybe a strong willed dictator with the right intentions will do the trick in a matter of 5 - 10 years .... but that was when i was a drawing room analyst of issues .... within the comfortable 4 falls of my house and looking at issues from there ... you just need to scratch the surface and then you will realize the enormity of the issue at hand ..... India being the country is it has its own unique challenges ....the kind of diversity in faith culture, language, social and economic status you find here will be somewhat equivalent to the diversity you find maybe in the entire continent of Europe ... and that is something real difficult to handle and manage efficiently ... any solution should be equally acceptable to every class of citizens of this country and believe me that is not at all easy ...

In the last couple of months I got a chance to spend some time with children of an Orphanage / Hostel in Bangalore though i would have liked to spend a lot more time but things in my professional life had got real hectic off late ... but whatever time i could spend over the weekends was another experience for me .... I was supposed to teach the children basics of Spoken english ... and inspite of me not knowing kanadda at all and the children able to understand my English with great difficulty .... i could see the enthusiasm in them .... you couldnt miss the glitter in their eyes .... for them someone coming down just to meet them ... talk to them meant a lot ...and who better than me to understand what they feel like ....this was the period where the reservation debate was all over the place ....... I have always believed that there should not be any kind of reservation at any level .... but a few days of interaction with these children who didn’t even know what an engineer is and what he does ... i could understand that given the current structure of basic primary education in India .... we need some support for children like these .....but should it be based on caste ??? In the attendance register most of the children didnt have a second name ... if there is anyone who needs reservation then its these kids ... who dont even know what caste they belong to ...

I think will leave this account at this ..... have a lot more to write will try to get my next post soon :)

And Miles to go before I Sleep

2006-03-24T21:30:00.000Z

This blog of mine has been neglected by me for quite some time ...... On asking myself why ??? there are lots of things that come to my mind ..... its been so hectic off late ... with all the travel i had to do over the last week.... working on multiple projects simultaneously ..... deadlines.... workload .... these are all reasons for sure .... and none of them incorrect .... but if i think deeper .... is this the only reason .... or did i actually had that unstoppable urge to express myself .... and kind off crib about anything and everything ..... which I had earlier ....i guess that fire wasnt there.

The last few weeks that i have been associated with Bharat Uday (refer to my last post ) ... have been revealing and truly thought provoking ..... it has dawned on me that it is the easiest thing to blame the system .... crib about the state of affairs of our country ... and write your heart out ...... the day you move out of your cozy & comfortable homes away from your comp and think of doing something on the ground rather than blabbering on the net ..... you realize “there are miles to go before I sleep” ... the last few weeks have completely transformed me as a person , changed my thought process radically .... and i beieve it has been for the better. During this period i have had the opportunity to interact with people mostly like me who are actually doing something and playing their part in whatever small way possible to bring about change , not like most who talk all the time but feel there is nothing they can do about it .

I was really touched by one such person , as a background this guy is a 25 smthg well settled working for Infosys as a Programmer analyst , which in my view (Given my exp with infy) is the coolest possible job on the planet :)) .... the thing which is different about this guy is that on a weekend you wont find him enjoying himself in a b'lore mall or a movie theatre ..... but planning marketing strategies for Jute Bags being manufactured by a Rural Plant set up by him along with a few likeminded friends ...... what had started off as a single plant employing around 15 rural ladies giving them permanent employment with earnings that dont dwindle with the change of season in 2001 to 7 plants today supporting more than 150 such families. I had a lomg chat with this guy and also visited one of their plants, the thing that struck me hard was when he said “We dont believe in Charity our aim is to empower the underpriviledged” , the main challenge during all these 5 years according to him has been to bring about a change in the way people think, to imbibe in them virtues of quality and productivity.

I have come to a firm belief that if we want to see the the rise of a great nation ..... empowerment of the downtrodden has to be the key .... we need to make them productive , rather than being protective about them and we need hundreds of people like the person I talked about to bring about a revolution, just thinking what can I do wont work ......

Talking about Bhatrat Uday mission .... there are a lot of contradictions as is in almost all organisations of its kind .... there are a lot of things which even I dont subscribe to ...... but still it is atleast a platform where coming together we are trying to do our bit.... over the weeks, we have had a few meetings subsequent to the one described in my earlier post and I have been more and more amazed looking at the enthusiasm the people have today to bring about change ... and the best part is that now the majority of guys coming are mainly young students who r in their 1st yr, 2nd yr of professional courses ...... you can feel the mood of the nation, there is for sure a revolution on the brink of eruption ... the jessica lal outcry and subsequent action is another indication towards that ..... we the people can no longer be taken for granted ....

Before Signing off .... the immortal words of robert frost come to my mind

“Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it's queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. “

- Robert Frost

Bharat Uday - A Mission Possible ?

2006-02-26T21:55:00.000Z

As mentioned in my profile, I am like any average Indian, I have an opinion on anything and everything, I crib all the time (As evident from my previous Posts J) about the state of affairs of our great nation, about the system, about our politicians, about rampant corruption, about the state of Bangalore Infrastructure J ….. I want all this to change, I want my Country to be the greatest. And I’m sure it’s not only me there are millions of us who think the same ….. but also like any average Indian when posed with questions like “why don’t you do something abut it” , the standard answer is what can I do ? I am just an ordinary citizen of this country, how can I go about bringing change on my own. To an extent I guess this logic is justified.

Now being the person I am and a net savvy one at that, on Friday night (24^th Feb) while aimlessly surfing the net, I came across an orkut community, Bharatudaymission (http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=8349957 ) and somewhere there I found out that the Bangalore Chapter which is just kicking off is having a meeting on Saturday the 25^th, Ok I thought lets check out what this Bharat Uday Mission is all about and visited its homepage as mentioned in there (http://bharatudaymission.org/ ) , I was kind of impressed with whatever little I could browse then, but still going for a meeting of an organization I have heard just now didn’t seem to click, also I had better plans ….. to freak out with friends on the weekend. Saturday morning the plans for the day got cancelled as a couple of guys were a bit preoccupied, so was free for the day … and just thought that maybe I can catch up with the meeting ….. I called up one of the contact nos checked out the details. And there I was at around quarter to 5, accompanied with the person I had talked to whom I picked up on the way, at the venue of the meeting … a simple residence of a s/w professional.

The first thing that struck me was the person who volunteered to host the meeting was part of Bharat Uday Mission for just a week and hadn’t met anyone till that time, that was just a prelude to the enthusiasm I was about to witness over the next 3 hrs, One by one people started dropping in and not a single person accompanied, no sense of the herd effect …. “chal tu chal raha hai toh mein bhi dekh leta hoo” and most of them not knowing anyone else till that time. By the time everyone one was in we were 8 gentlemen and 1 lady of which one of them had traveled 45 kms to attend the meet immediately after a class and had a class next morning 9 am. And you coudnt have expected a better representative gathering of just nine people, there were Engg students(2), a management student, s/w professionals(4), a lady doctor and a self employed free lance consultant. If we look into the regional diversity of the representative gathering we had representation from Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, and Delhi …. The only thing common among such a diverse group that had brought all of us there was a mission, a vision for our great nation.

Here I would come back to a statement I made earlier “How can I go about bringing change on my own” …. And this was the answer to that question, we need to come together on a single platform merge our strengths, and work together for our common vision. And Bharat Uday Mission had provided a platform for us that day.

I wont say that we did some great path breaking stuff in that meet, Also none of us had much of an idea how to start and where to start, but still each one of us had fire in them to do something, we discussed a lot of things, and believe me by sitting together and brainstorming for about 3 hrs we did get to the stage where we had an action plan regarding what we should be doing in the next few days …. The level of enthusiasm can be judged from the fact that when we were talking about spreading the message, we decided that we will distribute a few pamphlets to people coming out from an RDB show …. maybe tomorrow … one of them instantaneously said why not today ??? and guess what three of us were at Forum (PVR multiplex in Bangalore) at 10 in the night the same day distributing those pamphlets …… I still can’t believe it that I was there ….

I don’t know how far this will go ….how long will the spark last … maybe disillusionment sets in ………I don’t know whether will be able to make any kind of impact ….. but at least there is the satisfaction that we are at least trying today …… at least next time someone says that why don’t you do something …. I can say I tried … and why not ??? why cant the mission be successful …. Yesterday we were 9 people …. Maybe tomorrow we will be a 100 and someday maybe the entire country will rise ….. that is the day hopefully we will be freed from most of our problems ….

Before signing off --------

“One individual may die for an Idea; but that idea will after his death, Incarnate itself in a thousand lives. That is how the wheel of evolution moves on and the ideas and dreams of one nation are bequeathed to the next”

– Subhash Chandra Bose

“To revolt is a natural tendency of life. Even a worm turns the foot that crushes it. In general the vitality and relative dignity of an animal can be measured by the intensity of its instinct to revolt”

- Mikhail Bakunin

“Since you have come into this world, leave some mark behind...otherwise what is the difference between you and the trees and the stones?”

- Swami Vivekanand

here I am ....

2006-02-26T21:16:00.000Z

here i am ..... a 25 yr young / old guy sitting at my office desk after work well past 9 pm , having just created a blog site for myself , wht makes me to do this ?? do I have the time , the skills or the patience to blog .... the practical answers to all the above three questions are a big NO , but still here am I ....

If I dwell a bit more on this ... i begin to realise that the urge to express my inner self , is overpowering ..... maybe akin to a simmering volcano ... but again the question arises do I actually need to go to a website and put in all the effort to type down wht i feel and wht i want to express .... dont I hav other options ??? ...... thinking of options ... maybe yes , maybe i talk to friends debate with colleagues that wud be more direct and satisfying for sure ......... but the fact remains that in todays pacy world who has the time .... and frankly speaking who cares wht u think , another problem is that of a limited audience .... now the person u are with might not be interested in what i think of Denmark and those cartoons .... and maybe i wont be interested if he tells me the latest gossip abt ash and Junior B .....and further even be carefull not to offend someone ....... and these days u know how ppl take offence on seemingly irrelevant matters , the fact is when ppl in somalia can start protests against Denmark where I guess not more than 50 ppl will be able to locate it on the world map.... now i think I'm digressing ... coming to the point ... I'm sure its too risky to speak out anything anywhere ......... so wht do I do ???

so here I am at the most wonderfull place ..... where I can just vomit all I feel , without caring a damn whether anyone is listening or not , whether anyone likes it or not (though i know with cyber security and all if someone is hell bent on getting back to me ..... on smthg offensive even here ... can easily track me down :-) ..... hence willl try to be as careful as possible ) .......... i just love the medium , and i will try to make use of it as much as possible ......

till then signing off .....

Cartoons vs Paintings

2006-02-25T12:33:00.000Z

Recent times have seen a surge of religious sentiment to levels that have not been seen or heard in recent times. It all started with some obscure Danish newspaper publishing seemingly harmless (for them) caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed who as far is I understand is the most respected figure in Islam. Angst and displeasure was natural and certainly expected, but what followed has well been beyond anyone’s wildest imagination, with violent agitations across the world leaving hundreds dead and destroying property worth millions.

In this whole episode what fails any explanation is how did such protests spread so wide , wild and far, and that too, the worst protests taking lives of people, coming approximately 4 months after the Cartoons were first published, this has for sure raised valid concerns that maybe these were not just a natural reaction to a seemingly provocative caricature of the Prophet, but more like an organized attempt to fuel these protests, a reflection of the current standoff between the Islamic world and the West ,with the cartoons being just the spark a few vested interests were waiting for to cry war.

Now this issue has been debated so much in recent times at various forums that further dwelling into the how’s & why’s wont make sense, here what I intend to do is to get closer home and try to bring forth how our own local so called “secular” Indian leaders have not been left behind in exploiting this issue and the sentiments attached with it,also try to draw a parallel with something which has happened in India itself.

Now this starts off at the top when our esteemed Prime Minister sends of a strong letter of protest to Denmark to convey how bad we are feeling about the Cartoons knowing very well that the caricatures were printed by an Independent private publisher which had already tendered apologies inspite of there being no law in the land of Denmark which would have forced them to do so, but that is also absolutely fine Mr Prime Minister, but would have loved to hear one word of ridicule or protest for Mr M.F. Hussain following his great display of respect for Hindu gods and goddesses , but off course why would you do so especially when there is the possibility of losing out of a Vote bank through suspected alienation of Muslims from your Party (U know how many contenders are there in the race to capture their votes :) )after all yours is a secular party.

Now when all this is going on, how can our pillars of secularism be left behind, Our own Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh and his bete noire Ms Mayawati come out crying foul…. “snap trade ties with Denmark” , Having absolutely no idea whether the state of Denmark had anything to do with the Caricatures or not.

With Mr Chief Minister leading the way how can the minister of state for Haj (Now whats that ministry?) comes out shouting at the top of his voice, 51 Crore for the cartoonists head !!!!!!!!!!! In what age are we living it, this is a person holding a constitutional position and is expected to be responsible for upholding our constitution. Even after all this not even a murmur from anyone , even the media is happy to keep it on the 8^th page. And then there have me many more realted comic incidents in the recent past and these are just samples.

I have called this Post Cartoons Vs Painitings for a simple reason, I just came across a protest against the MF Hussain paintings on the Net, now to see how according to me protests ought to be done go through the links below,

http://www.sanatan.org/hussaincampaign/painting.php

http://www.sanatan.org/hussaincampaign/index.php

also have a look at the Paintings of MF Hussain in case u haven’t seen them yet, Instead of Shiva in that pose had he drawn the Prophet, going by what has been happening, there would have already been a 3^rd World War. I would have never written on this subject had I not seen these paintings today.

There has also been another interesting development today, One Mr Ashok Pandey who claims to be the President of the Hindu Law Board (Obviously a pun on the Muslim Law board) has offered Mr Yaqoob Qureshi 101 Crores for the head of MF Hussain and 51 Croeres for anyone else J , Now this is the kind of challenge the Indian administration need to take action.

Link to the above story - http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1424968.cms

I am an agnostic, as is written in my profile, It is not like I am deeply hurt religiously that’s why I have written this, my sole purpose of this post is to expose “secularists” and their double standards.

P.S. – had just wandered over to this one, this guy anant has put my views very aptly in his post – http://o3.indiatimes.com/anant_rulz/archive/2006/02/18/484615.aspx

Color Blindness

2006-02-22T19:54:00.001Z

Ask anyone … and not necessarily an uneducated, ignorant person …. what is color blindness … in 9 of 10 cases you will get a reply on the lines that a color blind person is one who cannot see colors …now what does that mean does the world of a color blind is a black and white TV ????

As a matter of fact it is estimated that approximately 8-12 % of the male population has red green color blindness, which is nothing more than a problem in distinguishing certain shades of Red and Green which even people suffering from this disorder don’t realize until they go through the ishihara test for color blindness wherein they are shown colored dots and asked to identify numbers hidden in them. Color blindness is an inaccurate term for a lack of perceptual sensitivity to certain colors. Absolute color blindness is almost unknown.

But still people with such a problem are denied opportunities for which they are perfectly capable. And ppl in fact tend to hide such a problem. And the worst thing is that there is no consistency in eligibility criterion across different spheres of the professional world , I would just list down a few examples of which I am absolutely sure about –

1) People with color blindness are denied opportunities in Defense (This can be acceptable as defense forces need to be fit in all respects ... but is there no area in the entire defense establishment where such a person cannot work ??)
2) Admissions to Certain Professional Colleges – If you are color blind you cannot become an engineer from UP (Through UP common admission test), just cant understand if a person with color blindness can become an Engg from IIT then why not from a regional UP college .... There might be many more such cases including medical colleges.
3) Denial of jobs – here I will talk about the software industry of which I know , you cannot become a software engg. in TCS one the leading Indian IT services company, they have a compulsory pre employment medical test in which color blindness is the only possible reason for which you can be permanently denied employment, whereas there are other Indian companies like infosys which doesn’t have any kind of medical test as do most of the MNC’s in India …. This just defies all logic …. In software where most of the time you work on black and white code why does a condition in which u cant distinguish certain shades of red and green become critical.

Mentioned above are a very few things that I have touched upon which I am sure about and I have a feeling that this is just the tip of an iceberg.

In most organization today there is a conscious attempt to accommodate people with disabilities, there is also lot of talk about inclusion in the society for such people , cant understand why this discrimination against people who cant even be called disabled, you wont find many people talking abut this as most who know about their condition tend to keep it with themselves , anyway no one can tell when there are as many as 10% men having the same condition.

I think this issue needs to be taken up, really don’t know by whom, to atleast arrive at some universal guidelines regarding what these people can do and what they cant in all spheres.

Rang de ... Provoking thought

2006-02-21T21:31:00.000Z

.... yesterdays post was just an attempt to get myself pumped up to take the plunge :-) , so here I am starting off as a blogger today .

ok so whts on my mind ... just cant get myself out of the impact that this movie Rang De Basanti had which i happened to watch this weekend ..... though i am no movie buff and am sure you wont see me writing about movies very often , i did actually watch this movie .... now you can call this peer pressure :-) ... all friends were like ... “dude thsi is a must watch“ ..... it so happened that i got hold of a friend of mine and dashed off on my bike to the theatre .... HOUSE FULL .... this was saturday around 1500 hrs ... that wasnt a problem .... there are only “somethings that money cant buy” for every thing else there is “master card“ .... but here there was something that money could buy but only hard cash ... by now u ppl know that i bought the ticket in black .... 100 ka 150 ... big deal I earn enough to afford that ..... it was only after watching the movie i did realize wht I had done .....I felt like kicking myself ... the least I could hv done for my country was not to encourage these black marketeers .

before getting into details about what I feel abt the movie in general and the issue apecifically .. let me tell u what has provoked me to write today ... I was just surfing the net when i just came across an article/reveiw from a sagarika ghose on ibnlive.com , she didnt take more than a few paras to tear apart this movie in shreds ..... isnt it surprising how these critics esplly the media so conveniently ignore things abt a movie that dont fit in to their overall analysis ....there was a comparison between Rang De and sholay in which she says that sholay was more real ..... as if jai and veeru in real life with two 303's can fight and finish off Gabbar's army ??? if that is probable I guess what is depicted in Rang De is even more ....agreed that towards the end the movie had become melodramatic and u dont expect such things in reality as of now, but the fact that the movie is a hit shows how much the youth of today relate to it ... as big an enemy britishers were b4 independence ... today corruption and these currupt leaders are no less .... and relating to the hero's of that time is not wrong in the given context .... then also we had Gandhi .... as were Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat singh ....then also there were different schools of thought ..... different ways to achieve a common goal .

If u look in todays context tell me one high profile politician ever to be convicted in any court of law on any charge ..., be it Narsimha Rao , Rajiv Gandhi , George Fernandes and the list can ggo on and on ..... or even sons of MP's like our Manu Sharma, son of former Union Minister Vinod Sharma who so convinietly gunned down Jessica in a crowded bar ... and is acquitted today after a trial that went for more than 7 years ... during that period ....a few witnesses hav met their natural death ... maybe a few unnatural ... and others wud hav turned hostile .... isnt it as simple as that ?? We have state ministers in India shouting at the top of their voice asking for the head of the danish cartoonost and no one moves (This one has got to me ... be prepared for my outburst on this maybe sometime later) ?? Also in cases when in a rarest of rare case high profile person is actually convicted (read salman khan) ppl blame the media for it....blame it on communalism ..... this is not done !!!!!!! and believe me wont be tolerated for long ...... it is just one spark that is needs to ignite this volcano building up in most of us .......

What I mean by saying all this is that though as of today I dont believe in the ways as shown in Rang de ...nor does the end of the movie inspire anything like that ... but the angst shown is very true .... the message very loud and clear ... if our judiciary doesnt improve, the day is not far when u will c that actually happening ..... I as a youngster of India hail the movie as really thought provoking .....and I wont accept any blame if some day I take up the Gun ............but to think big u need to start with a small step and I start off with a pledge that Rang De Basanti was the last movie I saw in Black

..... and I give the Indian Judiciary and administration some time to get its act together !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!