akash kusum

the rani of chudails

2009-05-25T07:54:00.000-07:00

Have never been known to be short of words no matter what situation I get into. But but but, for the first time in my life, today, I am feeling incapable of putting into words, the feeling that I am going through. Ecstasy?? No no, even that comes way short of describing what I am feeling.

It’s only been about a week since I started speaking with her, but it already feels like a life time. She couldn’t have made an appearance on the stage of my life at a more opportune time. Just when the protagonist was in the danger of getting lost in his own directionless world, she entered the stage as the destination that he had been seeking, for all these 26 years.

I call her the jungle billi, the icchadhari nageen, the rani of chudails. She is all these and much more and I can’t really describe what all she means to me. At first look, she seems to be the most stubborn and the most snobbish girl one will ever meet, but as you get to know her, you realize how delicate and how intricate she is, from within. And I bet that there is no other girl in this whole wide world who has such magnetism in her eyes as she has. With simple twirl of her head and as infectious a smile as any, she has made me hear what I have been waiting to hear all these years. Yes, I did hear the dil wali ghanti last night.

I hope and I hope and I hope and I hope that she continues to remain like this and mean as much to me as she does now, for the rest of my life. I will trade anything that I have or anything that I will have in future, for the opportunity of waking up every morning with the rani of chudails in my arms.
Amen..

Al Pacino, a master if there ever was any...

2009-04-13T12:46:00.000-07:00

The word master is often used very frivolously these days and every TDH is coined as a master of his/her trade. But if there is one gentleman from the world of cinema who fits the term to the T, it’s the unbelievably gifted, Al Pacino. Over the years audiences the world over have been enthralled with performances from great actors, past and present. Performances, which stay with us for the rest of our lives. Some, which immediately come to the mind, are:-

· Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind
· Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca
· Julie Andrews in Sound of Music
· Peter O’Toole in Lawrence of Arabia
· Marlon Brando in A street Car named desire, The Godfather and On the waterfront
· Charlton Heston in BenHur and The Ten commandments
· Jack Nicholson in One flew over the Cuckoo’s nest
· Robert de Niro in The Godfather II, Taxi Driver and the brilliant, Raging Bull
· Pacino himself in the Godfather trilogy, Dogday Afternoon
· Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and the Terminal
· Kamal Hasan in most of his films, especially the mind-blowing, Nayagan

Comparing actors and performances is an exercise in futility and devoid of any logic as you never know how X would have performed in the same role as Y has. But if I have to choose one performance which completely blew me away unlike anything else in the past, its Pacino’s turn as the blind, cantankerous, retired colonel in The Scent of a Woman. It’s a performance as powerful as any you would ever see and one you definitely feel only Pacino, with his typical Italian mannerisms, capable of delivering. His depiction of a sulking American war hero who is hell bent on taking his own life is a master class in the genre of performing arts if there ever was any. Watch how he portrays the rage, the helplessness, the vulnerability and the brazen confidence of the character with a finesse hardly ever seen before.

Take a bow Mr. Pacino and may you continue to amaze and enthrall us for a hundred more years.

journalism:-my foot!

2009-04-13T12:28:00.000-07:00

That journalism and media in India has plunged into an abyss of mediocrity over the last decade or so is no secret. This is especially true of the electronic media which is full of ridiculous news channels(so called) and even more ridiculous reporters. Doordarshan, for all its failures surely did a much better job of covering news than any of the scores of channels we have today. Media is supposed to play a very pivotal role in nation building, but in India, it is doing exactly the opposite. Sensationalizing trivial pieces of info into huge controversies has become the norm while they keep on ignoring real issues of importance. In fact the media has played a key role in strengthening the hands of the likes of Raj Thakrey and Varun Gandhi.

Yesterday, I was watching Barkha Dutt’s (highly overrated) program on NDTV. It was a panel discussion on the shoe throwing incident that happened yesterday. What really disappointed me was the fact that the whole of the discussion was focused on a trivial issue (whether any journalist had the right to behave in such a manner in a press conference?) while completely ignoring the much more pertinent issue (why did the journalist do what he did?). I am absolute sure that the journalist should not have behaved in the way he did, but it’s also important to note that we cannot look at this incident in black and white. A journalist, no matter how experienced, is ultimately a human who is bound to be influenced by emotions like everyone else. That the whole debate was focused on analyzing his behavior on account of him being a journalist rather than focusing on the reason for his outburst is hugely disappointing and symbolic of how the media focuses on the sneeze and ignores the cancer.

Also saw some news about Punjabi secessionist groups raising their heads once again. The injustice meted out to the families of the 3000 odd killed in the 1984 pogrom by India’s dysfunctional judicial system, has given a fresh lease of life to these groups and handed them an extremely emotive issue to strengthen their base.

shoebite III

2009-04-13T12:19:00.000-07:00

After Bush and Jiabao it’s our very own PC who has been a victim of the shoebite part III. The present home minister, PC had to endure the wrath of an aggrieved Sikh journalist today for the failure of his government and those of others to bring the perpetrators of the 1984 anti Sikh pogrom to justice even after 25 years. It’s been a long and frustrating wait for the victims of this pogrom and the Indian Judicial system and other institutions of state machinery (namely CBI) have once again failed to deliver justice to the aggrieved.

Any well functional society is built on the efficiency and fairness of its institutions and it’s a fact that these institutions in India have been totally eaten away by the moths of corruption. For most of these institutions, dancing to the tunes of their political masters has become their primary duty. This has resulted in a situation where there is hardly anything called justice. The lesser said about the Indian judicial system the better, a UNDP estimate has put the number of pending cases in Indian courts at 20 million and even if a single new case is not added to the lot, it will take about 3-4 hundred years to clear this backlog. Thousands of these cases are more than 20 years old. Where does the whole idea of justice stand then? Is it not true that justice delayed is justice denied? I sometimes feel that we are living under an illusion of having a system of delivering justice. It’s a complete sham.

What’s surprising and disappointing is that even extreme cases of communal carnage do not seem to change the mechanism through which justice is delivered. After 25 years and over 3000 massacres we have only had a handful of convictions in the anti Sikh pogrom and none of the accused with political links has been booked. Anybody and everybody who has any knowledge about that tragedy would tell you that this acquittal of the powerful has happened because the whole system of delivering justice has been subverted to meet the demands of these powerful few. Even other major rioting cases like Bhagalpur in 1989, post Babri demolition riots have had miniscule convictions and that too after more than a decade. And 7 years after Gujarat we see the same shameful story being played out once again.

How long is our nation going to deny justice to its own sons and daughters? It’s a frightening question to face and if not answered properly and promptly; then we will have more than mere chappals and shoes being thrown around.

back to where my pen belongs...

2009-04-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

yeah..shedding off the kilos of laziness that i had put on over the past few months, am back to writing...wishing myself luck for a much longer stint this time around...

BRING IT ON!!!

2008-10-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

Hoping to take a break from the relentless bleak news of a crumbling world economy and the perceived impact on jobs like mine, I hop on to one of the few Diwali parties organized this year. No, I was not invited but somehow managed to get in. Hoo Hoo what do I find? Isn’t this grand, this surely is one heck of a party. I make myself comfortable with some drinks and start checking out some chicks wandering around. But wait, who are these people? Haven’t I seen them before? Oh yes, that is Raj Thakrey for sure, in a truly jovial mood and there sitting in a corner, I can make out, are Vilas Rao Deshmukh and RR Patil if I am not terribly sloshed. But who are these other people? They neither seem to be in the mood to party nor do they show a great deal of disinterest, I catch a glimpse of a badge each of these folks is wearing. It says “Marathi Manoos”. Hmmm…I don’t know whether it’s the effect of the liquor or not but I seem to get detached from the party and get lost deeply in my own thoughts.

Raj Thakrey seems to be the central figure of the party. Yes Raj, you have every reason to party, after all your political fortunes have turned 180 degrees in the past six months. You were a forgotten caricature before that, like the ones you think you can draw (Raj is supposed to be a cartoonist) and then the grand plan hit you. Yes you got it right; if your uncle could use this plan some four decades ago to come to the political limelight then you could try it out to get some attention too. After all there was no harm in trying, and you wouldn’t have lost out on anything considering that you were already a big zero. I must congratulate you on your meteoric turn around; you surely have talent and lots of it. What if, you end up challenging the very idea of India? What if, you usher in a surge of regionalistic terrorism that can and will, destroy the very country which some great men (including ones from Maharashtra) and millions of unknown Indians have built over the centuries? What if you have to ignite a fire that will lead to a civil war and hence result in the total annihilation of the mother land? This is but a very small price to pay for a few more minutes of media coverage and eventually a few additional seats in the assembly elections, right Mr. Thakrey? But you know what? Your dreams will remain what they are,”dreams” because for every Raj Thakery and his goons there are 100 nameless and faceless Indians like me scattered across the length and breadth of this country who will not allow you to defeat the idea of India.

You act as if you are greatly concerned about employment of the Marathi youth; look yourself in the mirror Mr.Thakrey, the only person for whose employment you are fighting for is yourself. Yes, you were politically unemployed all this while and you want to get an employment at any cost, even at the cost of hatred and violence against the poor and innocents who happen to be your own countrymen. Whose jobs had Pawan Mahto and Dharamdev taken away? They were poor migrants from another part of India and come to the so called “financial capital of India” (that’s right, not the financial capital of Maharashtra) in the hope of ensuring two square meals for their family. Why were these people killed? Who is going to answer for their killings? It has to be you, Mr Thakrey, because you have blood on your hands. And you may get you few extra seats in the assembly elections and a few more hours of television footage, but someday you will have to answer for their killings and will be brought to justice.

What kind of an image do you want to create of Mumabi? Isn’t it supposed to be India’s most cosmopolitan city, haven’t the non Maharashtrians had a huge role to play in building the city to what it is today? Thank god, you don’t have any cousins in any of the other metros of India like Bangalore or Kolkata or Chennai or Hyderabad, at least they have not surfaced till now. But if you become successful in your sinister designs in Maharashtra then it won’t take long for your dupes to surface in all these metros. And then, India will surely perish.

Have you ever thought of the consequences that your actions might have on the millions of Maharashtrians living in other parts of the country or outside the country for that matter? I bet you have, but that has not deterred you because essentially you are not interested in the interests of any other Marathi apart from your own. How many times have you visited Vidarbha, Mr.Thakrey? a place which has seen hundreds of farmer suicides in the last few years. What have you done to share their burden? Aren’t they Maharashtrians? Shouldn’t you be helping them out? But no, that will be tackling a real challenge and solving those problems will need the real skills of a leader, of which, you have none, but more importantly fighting for farmers in far off Vidarbha will not get you the media eye balls that you need. Instead you create an issue out of nothing and go hammer and tongs at projecting yourself as the greatest Marathi icon since Sivaji.

You are indeed very concerned about the survival of the Marathi language, that’s why your children studied in English medium convent schools and your son has taken up German instead of Marathi in college(if i have my facts correct). And I am sure that you are never going to send them outside the state or outside the country for higher education or employment. You take great pride in the wealth of Mumbai; yes you should be, after all, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and their likes are true blue Maharashtrian companies. Have you ever thought that if the westernized countries, whose businesses have helped make India the financial power that it is today, start to think on your lines, where will it leave us and you’re Mumbai? Shouldn’t all the foreign companies shut shop in India and return to their own countries? If you have lynched a few of your own countrymen trying to earn a living for themselves in your state, don’t you think that these western countries have all the right to lynch thousands of Indians for taking away their jobs?

Finally Mr Thakrey have you ever thought about the long term repercussions of your reign of terror? You may like to fool yourself trying to think that the rest of India will take this lying down, but your are wrong ,Raj. India will not take this lying down, there have been many like you in the history of this ancient civilization who have dared to challenge the idea of India and all they have managed to gather is public humiliation and ridicule. The same fate awaits you. Even your dreams of being the prince anoint of the great Maratha tribe will be unfulfilled, because for every goon that you hire there are n number of Marathis who are Indians first and Marathis later. And if I am wrong on this count and if most of Marathis are indeed swayed by your deceit, then… good riddance, then Maharashtra doesn’t deserve to be a part of India.

Suddenly my thoughts turn to RR Patil and Vilas Rao Deshmukh. They have done an excellent job of maintaining their reputation, the reputation associated with any congress government in this country. They are true representatives of a congress led government. Yes the same congress party, whose one and only forte is inaction. It’s always been a party which has shied away from carrying out its responsibilities; it’s always shied away from taking a stand on any issue. They are notoriously infamous for invariably letting a small spark build into a raging volcano owing to their utter inaction. Isn’t it the same party which first propped up Sheikh Abdullah in Kashmir and then later didn’t know what hit them? Isn’t it the same party which created the myth of Bhindranwale to counter the Akalis in Punjab? Isn’t it the same party which arranged for the Shilanyas in Ayodhya? Isn’t it the same party which overturned the supreme court judgment in the Shah Bano case? Yes, it is. Great show Mr.Deshmukh and Mr. Patil, you have played true to reputation. You have been utterly inactive and in efficient.

Especial kudos to Mr.Patil, you were spot on when you supported the murder of Rahul Raj by the Mumbai police. He was indeed an ominous threat to the country, how dare he shout slogans against Raj Thakrey? He looked every bit a terrorist on the verge of killing innocents and yes, he couldn’t have been captured alive even though he was armed only with a country made pistol and you had a whole bunch of your policemen trying to overpower him. But how does that matter? After all he was only a Bihari and this was Mumbai! Mr. Patil, you were spot on, while trying to justify the killing of Rahul Raj, anybody who took the law into their own hands would have to be taught a lesson as you had just taught to Rahul Raj and to his poor family members in Bihar, wonder why your government and your police never thinks of teaching any lesson to the MNS hooligans though. Is this a case of selective amnesia on your part or are these hooligans too educated to be taught anything or do I smell something fishy here? Won’t it be beneficial to you if the MNS emerges as a real threat to the Shiv Sena, your political nemesis? Yes it will, I get your game Mr. Patil. Mr. Deshmukh can’t be blamed for any inaction; after all he hardly ever gets time to look after things other than his son’s Bollywood career.

Then my thoughts wander to the “Marathi Manoos” and I can sense a feeling of discomfort in their midst. They don’t quite accept Raj as their representative and don’t quite approve of the ways of Raj but are somehow cowed down and timid about speaking their minds. They are fiercely proud of the heritage they inherit, a heritage few other states in India can match. Maharashtra has been a land of patriots like few others, it’s been the land of men like Tukaram and Tilak and Gokhale and Savarkar who helped build this country with their sweat and suddenly the “Marathi Manoos” find among themselves this divisive figure who claims to be an icon on the lines of these greats and yet who is doing exactly the opposite to what those great Maratha’s did. The “Marathi Manoos” is confused about how to deal with this new creature. Well, for the sake of India and for their own sake, they can’t afford to be confused. “Marathi Manoos”, don’t get silenced by Raj and his goons, you can’t let yourself be cowed down by his violence. It’s high time you raised your voice because if you don’t, then, the the rest of India will think that you have ceased to be Indians. Boycott him wherever he goes defeat him in every poll that he contests in. Since Raj has waged his war against India on your soil, it’s you, “Marathi Manoos”, who has to take the lead in defeating him.

After such a heavy dose of thinking, whatever intoxication I had, wore off and slowly I walked out of the party. As I exited the gate I saw a huge banner dangling at the entrance indicating the occasion for the party, it read “The Death of India”. So all these people were celebrating the death of India…Well, good luck to the people who were still inside, but India has not died for sure. It’s been critically wounded by those inside but it will survive and rise once again.
As I catch a taxi to return home I shout out the following lines at the top of my voice…
…No matter what you do break the unity of this country for your own petty political gains, not matter how hard you hit us with your regionalistic brand of terror, nameless and faceless Indians like me will take up the challenge. Even if you have the whole of Maharashtra behind you, we will not be cowed away from a fight. So Mr. Thakrey, throw whatever you can at India, throw all your might, we accept your challenge…BRING IT ON!

Disclaimer:-

This blog is purely personal and has no affiliation whatsoever to any individual or organizations I am/was/will be associated
The views expressed herein are purely based on my opinions and needn’t be factual. In short, they are opinions, not facts and must be appreciated/dismissed as such

Bacheha-Ye-Aseman(The Children of Heaven)

2008-10-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

Did I come third Sir? Asks little Ali at the end of the movie and with this line, ends “The Children of Heaven”. The line brought a big lump up my throat and some of the lump still remains even after 36 hours since I finished watching it. There are some movies which stay with you long after you finished watching them and you spend hours , weeks and even months reflecting on what you have experienced. Its happened to me on many occasions but rarely do you come across a movie which you wish, just never ended. You just wish that movie continued for eternity and act as a perfect getaway from the imperfect world that you exist in. Majid Majidi’s “The Children of Heaven” is one such rarity, an experience worth living a life for.

Waking up before 12-12.30 on a Sunday has been an absolute no no for me for as long as I can remember and hence I was a little worried about this habit of mine when I came to know that the movie was to be shown on Star movies at 11 am on Sunday. Somehow before going to sleep on Saturday, I made up my mind that, no matter what, I will take a break from my habit and get up at the right time. I did and am extremely glad that I did, because otherwise I would have missed, probably, the most cathartic cinematic experience of my life.

For me, cinema has always been the most powerful form of art, the most powerful form of telling a story worth telling. More than any technical wizardry or any path breaking narrative style, what I most look forward to in cinema is the ability of a movie to successfully tell the story it is supposed to tell. Unless a piece of cinema is able to strike a chord in your heart and make you experience and relate to the agonies and ecstasies of the characters, it’s not worth making, no matter how much money you have spent on it.

For many years now I have heard about the unadulterated beauty and raw power of Iranian Cinema and often wanted to be introduced to it. I have heard about the skill of directors such as Majid Majidi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, Samaira Makhmalbaf and Dariush Mehrjui but thanks to the collections available at movie shops in India, never had a chance to experience their movies. Ironically, a country which has been at loggerheads with most of the westernized world for such long duration of time and has been looked down as a country trapped in a medieval time wrap, has quite a few cinematic lessons to teach to the more advanced(technically) movie industries of these countries. I am extremely fortunate that I got introduced to Iranian cinema this Sunday and I hope it’s just the beginning.

The movie is essentially a story of two 9 year old siblings, Ali and Zahra, belonging to an impoverished family living on the outskirts of Tehran. The story is all about the travails of the siblings who have to manage with one pair of shoes in between them as one pair belonging to Zahra is lost. The kids plan and manage to hide the missing of the shoes from their parents, as they know the trouble that their father would have to go through to be able to buy a new pair. I must mention here that, never have I seen a kid perform so well as the child Ali(Mohammad Amir Naji). He is simply astonishing and for people who liked Darsheel Safary in Taare Zameen Par or Jugal Hansraj in Masoom, you will be left bewitched with this performance. Ali is in an afternoon school and Zahra in a morning school and hence they think that they can manage with only one pair of shoes between them, but no matter how quickly Zahra runs home after her classes, Ali is invariably late for his school because of this stop gap arrangement.

As an audience used to movies addressing the most complex issues prevalent in the world and tired of all the cynicism and sense of gloom on display in almost every other movie, the fact that the lives of the lead pair are dictated by the nothing but a pair of missing shoes strikes you like a lightning bolt. The beauty of this movie lies in the simplicity of its story and the unpretentious nature of its narrative style, not to forget the stunning performance of the leads. The story is so simple and yet it has so much raw power that you get Goosebumps all along the one and half hour duration of the movie. There is this especially moving sequence in which the siblings trace the lost pair of shoes to a girl and follow the girl to her house with a desire to confront her, but as soon as Ali and Zahra find out that the father of the girl is a blind hawker selling his ware on the streets,they forget about their plans of confrontation. It’s a stunning scene and you are left awestruck at the wisdom of the kids, indeed, only if adults like us who shape the future of such kids had even an iota of that wisdom, the world would have been a much better place to live.

The movie ends with Ali participating in an interschool running competition, his interest being aroused because the third prize to be won is a pair of snickers. Ali knows that he can win the race if he tries but he doesn’t want to come first or second(the first and second prizes are something else) and all he is after, is the third place and the pair of shoes. Ali runs his heart out and gets completely drained by the closing stages of the race, somehow he manages to cross the finish line and is embraced by his delighted teachers. That’s when he asks, Did I come third Sir? No, he didn’t come third (he came first) and the expression of disappointment and anger on his face as he realizes this, is a sight to behold and treasured in the history of world cinema.

Thank you Iran and thank you Majid Majidi for giving us an experience which reaffirms the age old adage that “beauty lies in simplicity”. In a cinematic world order dominated by big budget studios and high flying directors pursuing technical wizardry, your story stands out, stands out for the beauty in its simplicity. May your ilk grow by the dozens.

A true Indian Idol

2008-10-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

Some years ago, I tried reading the “God of small things” when the buzz around the book was at its zenith. Frankly it didn’t impress me at all and I could finish only about 1/10th of it. For me the beauty of a piece of writing lies in the lucidity of its prose and in the case of this particular book I found that lucidity to be lacking in great measure. To this day I continue to believe that Arundhati Roy is a far more celebrated writer than she actually deserves to be. But guess what, in my eyes she has emerged as a true Indian Idol. Far removed from the scores of unwanted, superficial and sometimes comical Indian Idols who are anointed in the scores of dumb reality shows that are all pervasive on various television channels.

Arundhati Roy’s second avatar in public life is that of a social activist and the very first cause that she espoused was of the displaced villagers in the Narmada project. Here, she joined perhaps the most famous social activist in India, Medha Patkar. If my first impression of Miss Roy was negative due to my tryst with her famous book, my second impression of her was no different. I have always been an ardent supporter of industrialization and though I genuinely believe that the displaced villagers have to be relocated with better and permanent facilities given to them on priority, I don’t quite agree with the ways of the Narmada Bachao Andolan. But my impressions of the lady have changed radically over the course of the last one year. During this period she has done what no other celebrity in India or anyone with a power to influence, has dared to do, she has challenged the Indian public to reflect and introspect on the direction in which the country is going.

So often in this country, people who have been fortunate enough to have been successful don’t let their voices be heard on various matters of national importance. It’s an epitome of the “mera kya zaata hai yaar” mindset that most of us are guilty of being party to. In such an existing scenario Arundhati Roy has dared to raise her voice on many of the issues of public importance. Whether it is her support of the struggle for freedom of the Kashmiris, her forceful argument against the Indian judiciary for handing death sentence to Afzal Guru(accused in the parliament bombing case) , her fight with the ridiculously immature and childish Indian media for the kind of communally biased reporting they do in the event of any terrorist activity and on many more instances, she has let her voice be heard and debated those who reach conclusions too quickly for comfort. She did all this in spite of knowing what became of Taslima Nasreen and many others who dared to raise their voice against the devil within us. She has asked one question to all Indians, when are going to look at the mirror? When is the country which hopes to be the leading light of all democracies in the world going to introspect and reflect on the path that it is taking? To her, to me and hopefully to many like us, the image that we see in the mirror is not that of a country shedding its feudalistic mindset and emerging as the beacon of light for the democratic world, instead what we see is a country which is on the verge of receding into Fascism.

The only difference between a Fascist system ,championed most infamously by Hitler and Mussolini, and a democracy is the that ,while in both the systems power is at the hands of the group in majority, in case of a Fascist system there is no place for the minority group to coexist within that system. So it’s like, either you are with the majority or you don’t exist at all. Arundhati Roy believes that the idea of Fascism, where there is no place for an individual or group that doesn’t agree with the ideas of the majority group, is gaining ground. She believes that the great Indian middle class is guilty of not raising its voice against this spread of Fascism because most of them belong to the majority group anyway. But as she points out, the result of Fascism was shameful and destructive for the vast majority of people in Italy and Germany and the result will be no different for India ,if, god forbid, this country falls into the hands of the Fascists.

In a country so deprived of real heroes, where dozens of Bollywood buffoons are treated as role models by kids around the country, Arundhati Roy has emerged as a real hero, a true Indian Idol. No, not for her writing skills but for her courage to do a much more difficult thing, to make us understand the importance of critically questioning our own actions and fight the devil within. Of course, looking critically at our own actions is always the most difficult thing to do, but for a country at the crossroads of history, it’s the need of the hour.

The Bajrangisation of India

2008-10-14T11:22:00.000-07:00

Was watching the program Hum Log on NDTV India yesterday (one of the few watchable programs left on TV these days). The topic of discussion happened to be the recent spate of violence against Christians in India. The debate was similar to the other numerous mundane debates that we keep having on TV these days, until something really unbelievable happened. The representative of the fundamental right wing organizations threatened the guest speaker, speaking on behalf of the minorities, that Indian Christians will be beaten up by their people if they don’t mend their ways. I was dumbstruck, it totally befuddled me. How can this happen? How can anyone have the audacity to come on national television on prime time and threaten the members of the minority community like this? At another point in the debate a young soldier recounted his horrific tale. This soldier who happens to belong to the minority Christian community and is a resident of Kandhamal(the site of violence in Orissa), has been threatened by the members of the right wing fundamentalists of dire consequences in case he dared to return to his home without changing his religion. Can you believe this, a soldier who has served the country gallantly in the Kargil war having to face prosecution and humiliation like this? And that too at the hands of a handful of religious bigots for whom nationalism is nothing more than shouting slogans of “Bharat Mata ki Jai” .I was filled with shame, shame on being a mute spectator to the effort s of a few to drag back my country into the medieval age. This incident brings my thoughts to a topic that has been simmering in my mind for quite some time now, the Bajrangisation of India.

We all talk about the Talibanisation of Afganisthan which began after the fall of the Soviets and we all know that the Talibanisation of Pakistan(especially of the north western parts) has also gained speed in the last few years. But to me, what is of more concern (since it deals with my own country), is the Bajrangisation of India. The only difference between Talibanisation and Bajrangisation is that only the religion on whose name the radical philosophies are propagated is different. The essential philosophy is the same, the philosophy of intolerance and violence. A philosophy which teaches that everything that does not belong to your own community is ominous and detrimental to your community. Civil societies across the world didn’t hate the Taliban because they tried to glorify their own religion they hated it because Taliban propagated hatred towards people of other faith. I mean, why on earth would the Taliban destroy the magnificent Bamiyan Buddhas? Reason,the statues were a symbol of the most tolerant of all religions on the planet, Buddhism and the Taliban has something radically different as its founding principle, the most vicious form of intolerance.

I believe something similar to Talibanisation(only religion is different in this case) is happening in India and its being perpetrated by the hooligans of the right wing fundamental organizations.The recent attacks on Christians in Orissa and Karnataka is a naked example of their goal of saffronising the whole of India. The Bajrang Dal, as is widely believed, is at the forefront of these attacks. And they even give a reason for their violent acts, they say that India is being converted to an overwhelming Christian nation by the use of western money. They claim that millions of poor and underprivileged in India are being lured to change their religion and hence to stop these dastardly activities they are free to attack the Christians in any way they like. Anybody with a little bit of rationalism left, will tell you that the allegations of the right wing fundamentalist outfits are utter nonsense. According to official census figures, the percentage of Christians in India has gone down from 2.8% in 1951 to 2.3% in 2001. Can the Bajrang Dal answer why is this the case if the Christian institutions have indeed been carrying out forced conversions for years? The number of Indians who are deprived, both because of caste and income depravity is so huge that luring them to change their religion with economic benefits would have been easy if a serious effort was made towards that end and so the number of Indian Christians should have radically gone up.

Let me make it clear, I don’t refute that there might have been cases of forced conversions in parts of the country by some Christian religious bigots but such littered incidents can never serve as a reason to carry an attack on an entire community. A community which has had as big a part to play in the development of the motherland as any other. Many of us have been fortunate enough to have study in the highly professional convent schools. Does anyone remember any of our teachers or the school administration trying to coerce any one of us into taking up their religion? I have never heard of anybody in my school trying to play up the might of one religion while downplaying any other. And am sure that’s the case with thousands of other Christian missionary institutions who have brought in that much needed element of professionalism to our education system.

Consider for a moment, that indeed the allegations leveled by the right wing fundamentalists is true, that indeed Christian missionaries have been involved in mass forced conversions across the country. Even in that scenario, may I ask, who has appointed the Bajrang Dal and other right wing fundamentalists as custodians of the Hindu faith? Who has appointed them as our liberators from the marauding Christian crusaders? Aren’t there laws in the country to deal with all un lawful activities including forced conversions and shouldn't the law breakers be punished by the law enforcing agencies instead of Bajrang Dal mobs? Its worthwhile to mention here that in all the states which have anti conversion laws like MP, Chattisgarh, Gujrat(all BJP ruled states) there has hardly been anyone who has been convicted of being involved in forced conversions.

The plain and simple reason for the attack against Christians is that the right wing fundamentalists needs a new target to channel their energies on ,after already alienating most of Muslim India. They preach the same things that the Taliban and its likes preach in other countries, that any religion other than your own is vile and vicious and detrimental to humanity. It’s trying to build a culture of intolerance among the majority community of the country and the time has come for the educated and rational members of our community to raise their voice against such hooligans among our own midst, for crime knows no religion neither does terror. Let’s be clear, shouting slogans of “Bharat Mata Ki Jai” before carrying out any inhuman activity does not make anyone any less of a terrorist than someone from the radical Islamist groups. There is talk of banning the Bajrang Dal and I don’t figure out how it is going to serve any purpose. As we have seen with the ban on SIMI, banning a fundamental organization is not a remedy in itself.. What SIMI did was simply to change its name and carry out its activities under some other name like the Indian Mujahedeen or god knows what. Similarly if the Bajrang Dal is banned, they will simply change their name and nothing concrete will come out of banning them. If civil society in India has to win the fight against radicals like SIMI and Bajrang Dal then the fight has to begin within, within our own communities thorough the instruments of introspection, dialogue and debate. I certainly believe that the reason for the overwhelming image of Islam as the most radical religion on earth has a lot to do with the educated and rational members of the Muslim community not raising their voice against radicals in their own fold. Fortunately, for the majority community in India the situation has not turned so bad as yet, we still have time to redress the damage but we must act and act now.

How do we do it? How can we fight the radicals and the fanatical mobs? My theory in this regard has always been simple, something I call the chain of rationalism. If every one of us manages to share our views and play out our thoughts forcefully to at least one of our friends, if that friend in turn does the same to one of his/her friends and if the chain continues like this, then before long we will have enough people in our midst for the Bajrang Dal or its likes to have any impact on our society and they will become irrelevant themselves. Thus, what a nationwide ban may not serve, we might be able to do it, if we dare to raise our voice against hooligans in our own midst. The people of Afghanistan and Pakistan couldn't stop the Talibaisation of their countries and we see how rapidly their stocks are falling in the eyes of the world, we in India, who dream of us as a 21st century super power rather than a bunch of medieval fanatics, simply can’t afford to lose this battle against the Bajrangisation of our own country.

Disclaimer:-

This blog is purely personal and has no affiliation whatsoever to any individual or organizations I am/was/will be associated
The views expressed herein are purely based on my opinions and needn’t be factual. In short, they are opinions, not facts and must be appreciated/dismissed as such

Lets hear it for...Dada

2008-10-10T13:37:00.000-07:00

Saurav Ganguly’s retirement has come in at the perfect time. If not for any body else then certainly for the thousands of bloggers for whom writing on cricket was becoming increasingly tepid. Ganguly has always been a character which has aroused a huge amount of passion among the cricket crazy millions of India, either people hated him or worshiped him but there was hardly any cricket buff who was indifferent to him. I am no one to comment on the timing of his retirement and frankly one can never be objective while commenting on such topics, however, lets just hope that one of the best timers of contemporary cricket has played his final stroke with perfect timing.
My own impression of Ganguly has always been sort of wavering, while I couldn't but admire his guts and his grit and the fierce determination to succeed, I have also had many a fight with scores of friends and accomplices(especially ones from WB) who went ga ga over his talent. But now that he crosses over to the other side of the horizon, which sadly all sportsmen must do some day,I think of nothing but celebrating the moments which the man has given to so many of us. A sportsman’s retirement is always an occasion of mourning for his/her fans but I will mourn for him later. For the moment, I Will look back at his days in our collective conscience and cherish the memories which will remain. Ganguly has had many an achievement on the cricket field, some as an individual player of great calibre ,most as an extraordinary leader of men. His lasting legacy will be the aggressive nerve that he has instilled in the system of every Indian cricketer. And his ascendency to the captaincy also coincided with the emergence of a new and aggressive brand India in every sphere. As all true heroes do, he deserves all the applause and love from the country that he served, as he spends his last few days under the spotlight. He has been a true symbol of the changing image of the average Indian in the eyes of the globalised world. Ganguly has numerous fans across the world but nowhere are people as crazy about him as in his beloved Bengal. For the Bengali who has had been constantly loosing ground over his position as the most developed and cultured community in India, the emergence of Ganguly as a national hero came as a fresh lease of life. Yet the irony is that Ganguly is such an icon in Bengal because he was so un Bengali in nature. The Bengal that he emerged in, was considered to be mild ,nervous and unsure of its place in the basket of India. He changed all that, he emerged as a symbol of the man every Bengali wanted to be, a man who was so much like the Bengali heroes of yore like Bagha Jatin or Khudiram or Tagore. Heroes who inspired millions.
As the sun sets on Ganguly’s career, the sadness that engulfs me is also because of the fact that his retirement has reminded me of my own battle with that unconquerable foe, age. Indeed, as the heroes that we grew up with begin their long walk into oblivion, it also bears a testimony to our growing old. I was a kid when Maradona retired but still I could feel the void created by his departure, I was deeply saddened when Sampras said good bye but this time the feeling is even more sombre and I dread the day when the greatest hero of my growing up years(the man who has given more joy to the Indian diaspora than any other individual in its history), Tendulkar, hangs up his boots. But I will save that topic for some other day.
…For now… friends, fellow Indians and sports buffs around the world, lets rise up and give a grand farewell to Dada ,for this is the least that we could do for all the service he has rendered to Indian cricket and the smiles he has brought to so many faces over the years.

Mir Jaffer reincarnated

2008-10-09T11:05:00.000-07:00

This year's puja has been one of the worst ones for Bengal in living memory.The image of the progressive Bengali has indeed taken a sever beating in the eyes of the world.The Bengali community has been at the forefront of everything that is genuinely good in Inida right from culture,litreture, cinema, music to the standard of human capital ,since the time the East India company set shop in this country. Talking of the East India company also brings me to the central character in this fiasco, who along with her hooligans has ensured that Bengal moves a couple of decades back at a time when other states are leaping forward. That person is the eternally fip flopping mamata didi. Incidentally, I myself, was a big supporter of her till a few years ago and firmly believed that it was through her, that Bengalis will finally get rid of the decades old communist bogey.That was of course until she realised that flip flopping on every issue under the sun is her political gurumantra and better sense dawned on me. To me and to many others who follow the politics of Bengal closely, her latest agitation over Singur was another political gimmick to get some extra footage in the news media. I certainly never believed that she will carry it this far, that she will actually sacrifice the interests of the overwhelming majority of the state for a few more expected votes. The loss of the Nano project is a much bigger loss than the Rs.1500 crore that Tata was supposed to invest there and the jobs that have been lost by the hugely skilled but deprived work force of the state. The beating that the image of the state has received will take many decades to undo especially in an era where there is so much cut throat competition between the states to bag every additional piece of investment. Thus ,for the great disservice that she has done to her own people and the great shame that she has brought to the image of the progressive Bengali I will have no qualms in equating her with, unarguably, the most viled of all traitors in the history of India, Mir Jaffer. For people who dont remember their history too well, he was the same guy, who, as the leader of Nawab Siraj U Daulla's army, turned against him and fought for Robert Clive resulting in the victory of the East India company in the battle of Plassey. This victory laid the foundation of the 200 year old British Raj in India. Who knows if there was no character such as Mir Jaffer in history we might never have had the Raj in this country. To me and to many others like me, mamata has done a modern day Mir Jaffer and she deserves to be thrown out of the conscience of the collective Bengali mind for this act of treason. If I ever get a chance to meet her, will ask her the following questions:
1) Doesnt she know that considering the average size of land holding in he state of WB, a farmer can never ever dream of taking care of the needs of his family through farming alone?

...land is an instrument that has a lot of emotional attachment for the farmers, and mamata used this emotional angle to persuade the unwilling farmers to toe her line in spite of the fact that if a proper cost benefit analysis was done for an individual farmer, the benefit of giving the land for the factory would far outweigh the cost of not being able to use the land for agricultural purposes.

2) Doesnt she know that even though Bengalis are no less skilled than any other community in India still the average Bengali has not been doing as well as others because there simply are not enough of employment opportunities inside Bengal and the Tata plant along with the ancillary units would have at least made a start towards redressal of this problem of unemployment?

...its for people like her that we have no option but to stay outside our own state to earn a decent living.

Yet I just pray that I never get to meet her and even if I do by some chance, she becomes an un relevant , un important entity by then...

Pujo and an image thats floating away

2008-10-08T12:27:00.000-07:00

Tonight is mahanabami...the final night of festivity before it dawns on Maa's subjects that its once again time to say good bye. Somehow for most people pujo ends on the night of nabami itself because Vijaydashami is all about saying good bye to the mother for one more year...and who knows one may never be around to welcome her once again in our midst after the long wait of 52 weeks. Am already in a state of mourning for the departure of the mother...Every year during pujo i long to be with my family and friends and enjoy the festivities with them, i long to go back to my village the image of which has always been a calling card to me, however as i go deeper and deeper into the rumbles of the corporate dream ,that image, moves farther and farther away. The images of those years in adolescence which I spent in that village when getting a new shirt and a pant for Pujo was the most important thing in life, when getting a 50 paisa or a one rupee coin to buy crackers and toys used to be such a hard task, all those images are still so vivid and so fresh in the mind. Those images bring a smile to the corner of my lips but also a tinge of a droplet to the corner of my eye as realisation dawns in that alas!those days will never return.How I wish, like everyone else probably, if the years could be rolled back somehow,Last year I and my brothers had been to one of the puja pandals in Bangalore and it felt quite good however didn't feel like going this time around as its quite so far away from my place...tried to catch glimpses of the festivities in Kolkata on e tv bangla and liked every bit of whatever i could catch(only maa knows why e tv shows so less amount of footage of the festivities). As always, have made up my mind to be there at the place I want to be when Maa comes calling next time around.Just hope that I can make it at least next time around for I have an account to settle with those images which haunt me...