Delhi - Eh Thik Nahi hai PM ji !!

 Well the whole country is going nuts about the delhi rape case and quite rightly so. I was thinking about the reasons why there are a few men who behave like animals. Then I realised this mindset is planted into so many men just that so many 'thankfully' are not 'courageous' enough to be ass****s.. A small example is bollywood (read 'any Indian language'wood) and what all it teached us for the past 3 decades or so !! Luckily I didn't need to write a elaborate article since I came across this wonderful one !! Here it goes.. 

 Things you can learn from the movies about women:

1) If a woman is not interested in talking to you, you have to harass her for a while, sing a romantic song and when the song ends, she will fall in love with you.
2) Rape is a popular tool for marriage and revenge in the movies of 1990's. After a woman is raped, she cries 'Oh! I have lost my honour and now I have to marry my rapist.'
3) After marriage, a modern woman wearing skirts and jeans suddenly become traditional and family-type, by wearing sarees.
4) To marry a woman who doesn't like you, it is enough if you forcibly tie the mangal sutra around her neck. Then she is your wife, irrespective of whether she likes it or not.
5) Men drink and smoke for fun and in varied styles while a woman who drinks and smokes is of a loose character and not fit for marriage to the hero. The hero usually has some dialogues for her 'stop drinking, smoking and learn to be a proper woman'
6) The rape scenes are shown elaborately with all details of trauma, pain and glamour but consensual love- making scenes between couples start and end when the lamp is turned on and off. Before the year2000, Sex scenes were considered controversial more than the rape scenes.
7) When two women love the same hero, one woman would be a skirt- wearing and skin-exposing moden woman while the other women would be a saree-wearing conservative woman. The hero dances and plays with the first woman but marries the second woman.
8) After defeating the villain, the hero proudly tells him 'Go wear a woman's dress now, loser'.
9) When a woman shouts or gives a solution, she will be told not to argue like a man.
10) When the hero pinches the heroine's waist (before they know each other), she abuses him and few minutes later there will be song in which both will be dancing romantically.

So much cultural and social brain- washing has happened through the movies between 1980 and 2000. Now though some movies give dominant and meaningful roles to women, producing a huge heroine-based movie is not considered financially feasible as there is no market or fan audience to watch such stories. As long as we promote the hero as a muscular body of character and action; and the heroine character as a sexy body for glamour and lust, the same mentality will also be reflected in real life.

 But this doesn't mean I would like the law and justice of this country to wait for another decade or so where we can refine brains. I don't want my mom, sister, wife or for that matter any girl in this country to walk out of home without the belief that they are going to come back safe or alive.. Harsh punishments short term and refinement of all these bullshit mentioned above in long term should be the way forward.. 

Kasab - Justice delivered or Weakness revealed ?

Note : Don't be furious just seeing the title and before reading the post !! (Ofcourse you can be furious after reading it)

    First sight of all the news sites yesterday morning were flashing the death sentence to Ajmal Kasab on my face. Am I excited ? 30% yes.. It's going to take atleast a few months to execute the sentence.. He still has two more judicial steps to try before he joins the long line of death row inmates in the country. Whatever, atleast the judicial system prevailed (Well lets see !!)..

    But my major reason for 70% not being happy was not the one said above. Let me take a time machine and fast forward my life to the day when Kasab will be hanged. I could see media conducting debates and human rights activists fighting for abolition of capital punishment. I was left standing there (read the 'I' here as any common Indian citizen) to wonder what did I particularly achieve from this 'Flexing the muscle' event to give a terrorist who boarded the boat from Karachi to get exactly the same prize. At the end, we have given Kasab what he actually wanted !!

   Does that mean we should have let him go ? Isn't it injustice for the 170+ innocent people who died because of his deeds. I'm no human rights activist to fight against capital punishment or Mahatma to let him go..

  As a common man, I just want to see the end achievement of all this capital punishment or hanging the terrorist. If we think we have showed our strength by hanging a mentally unstable animal there are high chances that the mumbai blasts, parliamentary attacks and the mumbai shootings will continue. If we think these terrorists will be frightened because one of their fellows is brought to justice and killed, I think this is mass stupidity. Instead we have given him martyrdom and probably teenagers in terrorist training camps would have already been reading his case study and bravery !!

 In conclusion, I am 30% happy for hanging the animal who slaughtered 170+ of my fellow innocent countrymen. The rest 70% will be completed when my country improves its security in all fronts and be one step ahead of these obnoxious rats. Until then I don't see a point in showing our power (read weakness) by hanging a lame animal who doesn't have a country or principle of his own !!

 Jai Hind... 

A gold medal - for collective delusion

'Gagan - Bronze, Vijay Kumar - Silver, Saina - Bronze and now Mary Kom - Bronze atleast' - We keep hearing time and again the victory grunts of so many proud Indians.. Not just that a huge over-estimation of catching up china in a few years in terms of medal count.. (Seriously !! Are you kidding me ?? Well yes may be in 400 years).

Anyways we collectively are a nation of losers in olympics and we are going to be so for a sometime in the near future atleast. This blog is not a 'How to make it work?' document for future olympic success but rather a sad reminder of where we loose our games even before reaching the playing fields..

Historically a little deeper analysis of all the hugely successful countries in the olympic games - USA, South Korea, China the common factors that pop up are the fields they have been winning before winning in the games. These countries have provided its people with basic food, potable water, education, healthcare and social security before letting them compete in the international arena. Anyone in a village in the USA or China can have access to the best sporting facilities in the world and they are treated like assets. At the National sports academy of India, a five time world champion boxer was made to boil her own vegetables and meat because the cafeteria food causes indigestion. The point here is not just the facilities but the attitude towards sports !!

Government being partial towards one or two sports have been a long standing allegation that most times hold true. Nobody prefers to take up run or box all their life to earn a miserly monthly wage and a old government flat. The moment an athlete brings home a medal, all possible governments from panchayats to central government splash cash on them which inturn goes into starting private academies where only the athlete becomes the beneficiary. But we don't think a step back and give opportunities to promising talents to bring home those medals. If a part of this cash splashed on amateur cricketers for playing 6 weeks a year is spent on a wide variety of sports, we as a nation can climb the olympic ladder much faster. For now, other than cricket that prevails in every 'gali' of India, sports are concentrated in centres of excellence usually far outside the reach of an ordinary talent from villages of India. Badminton in hyderabad and hockey in punjab are prime examples..

For now I can see only two kind of athletes.. One a lucky bunch of city kids with access to far too few substandard training facilities. Another a bunch of rich kids who donot depend on government funding for their training. The possibility of not finding a Usain bolt or Lionel messi in a country of 1.2 billion sounds a statistical improbability to me.

To put in simple words, we need to go a step back to think where we loose the games.. My humble opinion is its much before the olympic lamp is lit. Much before the athletes tie up their laces. Until we do that we can only be winning gold medals for being a nation of collective delusion.. 

This is Death.. Not a Divorce !!

Folks.. A long break to come up with a blog which has been roaming in my mind. And it took a while to accumulate this thought to bring out something substantial.. More importantly a disclaimer this blog is about atheism and if you are a theist and if u feel I'm trying to push in atheism into you 'I'm very sorry'. Whatever written here is my opinion and possibly opinion of atheists.. You need not answer any questions.. And I don't have anything against your beliefs.. So just enjoy reading !!

“I love you."

The first time you probably heard this sentence probably is not in your memory now.. Because most likely it is spoken by your parent when you were just born.. Probably not a 100 times at the beginning it not have made sense.

When we grew up books, movies, reality all drove this word Love into us. At 10 we learnt it is a weapon “He loves her!” As a teenager we realized it had a consequence, and never used it till the r'ship reached a commitment level. We learned it had impact.

Eventually learning it can be a hard word to implement.

When we grew up we understood the love of our parents even when they punished us or didn't get us what we wanted at the moment we wanted. But still we could make out the love in it. At a stage we learnt to love somebody romantically (Probably the reason why we cry in a climax scene that says "because.. I love you.."

All of us, in observing relationships, understand there is a point where we categorize the action as “loving” and where we would claim it is not.

And we are all grown up listening to 'God loves us !' whichever God it may be.. From this phrase I didn't think God would give me whatever I wanted if that's what you thought is the reason why I don't believe in him/her.. I know and understand the love even when my Parents punished me or didn't give me what I wanted. I also know in a marriage relationship even without giddy and giggling all the time there is love. I also understand there are times when God has to make hard decisions and don't want him to be an ATM machine. But I expect the word 'Love' to mean what it means in other similar contexts

However there is one significant difference. In all our other relationships, we can communicate, with those involved, or with others, to learn, grow and differentiate as to what is love. With God there was only silence. Sure, others provide their own (conflicting) guesses, but those is all it is—conjecture on the human’s part.

“God, why did my 25 year old friend have to die?”
Silence.

“Is it because he had lived long enough, and you wanted him home?”
Silence.

“Was it a testimony to others, giving them a chance to get right with you?”
Silence.

So we start giving our own theories, and arrive at some queasy solution. An uneasy restlessness, often wondering if we got it quite right. Always willing to re-evaluate and guess again.

For many non believers this silence grew into a disconnect; it become more and more difficult to use a word so well understood—“love”— when as I mentioned there is a huge gap to what I understood about the word 'Love' and the 'Love' used in the context of God. A “loving” God would allow ten-year-old boys to be raped by football coaches? And allow it to continue because the person's reputation is big? Is this the best the so called 'Love' god do ?

I know you theists can come up with something like “We can’t explain it… but maybe _________” but can someone explain “Why God allows kids to starve in Africa” when your car is strewn with McDonald’s wrappers.

If that is your excuse, stop saying “God loves you.” Because it sounds naive even to you..

We didn’t abandon belief in God, because we weren’t getting what we wanted; We understand 'Love' so much that it's not a bed of roses all the time. we came to realize the ridiculousness of fitting the word “love” to someone we immediately and in contradiction, we don't understand. One who was silent when asked something without any support or being against or response of any kind for that matter.

"No God” makes a whole lot more sense than “a loving God who doesn’t act loving, but we assume he IS loving, because any other possibility is too scary to even contemplate.”

It was not a divorce. In divorce the two people are still alive and there are chances of further love somewhere down the road.

This is a death and God was never there !!

Thaya - one and only one..

To my best friend Thaya - the best person I ever met in my life so far..

It all started on a hot summer day in the roughened tarmac of Govt college of Engg., Salem.. A tough NCC guy was spitting out some instructions which we have to follow to get into the Air wing of NCC.. I have seen this tall lad with a spectacles who lives next door in the dorm and studies in the same class.. Never spoke to him though.. Never knew what made us stand together probably the similar height we share or its just destiny.. Getting back to the scene, We have to run in the hot roughened tarmac for about 1000m and selection will be based on the results.. He finished first and surprisingly I finished just behind him.. Selection done and there comes the twist, he has got a blistered feet thanks to the hot tarmac.. We exchanged our shoes to protect his leg and made the long walk back to the hostel.. I still remember that day when I met the best person of my life.. And luckily he turned out to be my best friend..

To tell something about us, we both aren't quite similar.. I am short tempered but I can't be angry on someone for more than 5 mins.. Thaya is quite opposite.. He has a lot of patience but once he loses his temper its tough to calm him down.. Im dominating he isn't.. I take things easy but he pretends to be :) But the things that makes me feel he is the best person I 've met so far is the fact that he keeps friends. loved ones and finally himself in that order.. A simple analogy I can think of is a Jack fruit.. Looks so rough from its shell but try tasting the fruit inside I can assure its worth the time and effort.. A very calm and collective support, one will feel so strong with Thaya at your back.. Simply he lets you be yourself and he ll be the same..

We have been tough at each other on many occasions but at the end of 3rd year somehow we fell apart.. I donot know whose mistake is that till this day.. We didn't utter a word to each other for 3 years... Not 1 or 2.. 3 whole years.. Tried making a zillion calls and attempts knowing how hard-nosed this guy is.. And finally the best part of Thaya comes up.. One night he calls up and started speaking as though he just hung up the phone to pee !! I never asked him the reason and he never told.. Its all understood I guess..

After a long long time got a day to spend with him in Chennai.. We were back to the old form.. Its supposed to be a shopping day (Shopping for his' someone spl :)) ) but asusual we did eat more than shopping !!! Measured the city limits with our bike and backs begging for rest.. Finally packed him up in the last bus to NITT.. When I reached home I got an sms.. Would never forget that.. "Don't wana thank you.. But Thanks da.. Without you it would not have been possible.." To get something out of Thaya is really special when all I did do was serving as his driver for the whole day.. I was so happy it meant a million words to me..

After reaching UK he was one of the very few I still had contact with.. His long long love stories which made me wonder about the side of Thaya I 've never seen before.. :) He likes to give surprises and shocks in weird ways one can't think of.. One midnight he wakes me up to tell he just rode his bike for 100 kms when I was like what on earth that has to do with my sleep ?? We weren't like everyday buddies chatting daily or roam with each other.. But the few mins of phone call every fortnight or so makes a lot of sense than years of being together as friends.. In short, he is the one of those people I can bet my life with..

With his love for giving surprises, he chose March 6, 2011 for his biggest surprise.. He has been playing catching up with me in most things so far but this time he decided to defeat me hands down.. He want to go first and he left us all to be with the gods.. Its been more than 2 months but I still believe he is around us.. He is even reading this blog and probably would have known India are the world champions even before they did.. When all of India celebrated the victory all I could think were the times when we were dancing with our shirts off during Ind vs Pak match in 2003 WC at the dorm TV room.. Finally someone said "Life is not about the years, but the moments where we actually lived", I would better choose the years with him as a friend than a few moments that bring smile and tears together..

I would say "Donot rest in peace so soon".. We need you with us.. Miss you Thaya..

Movies in 3D but Education in 1D ??

Folks.. Nice to meet you through this blog after a really long time.. You know the typical pressures and frustrations of PhD is riding on me that kept me away for long..

So this blog actually did start in my mind when I went through an article this morning which stated the interview with Azim Premji (CEO, Wipro tech. ). Well lets peep into the core of the problem before coming to a possible list of solutions..

Everyone loved when technicians gave a 3rd dimension to all their comical creations.. From the 'Adventures of Narnia' & ' Harry Potter' to romantic tales of 'Tangled' have been stealing the heart of people irrespective of ages.. People even look for 3D televisions to see things as reality.. We expect reality in smaller things like entertainment but are we really multi-dimensional in our educational approach ?? (I would add a few more question marks there !!)

Everyone wants to be a professional !!! Professional in our definition includes Dr, Engineer and Lawyer. I wasn't sure about the definition of professional but when I looked into the dictionary it said 'following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain'.. I don't see a word describing what work it should be !!

Then what is that created the stereotype in following these studies blindly ?? I couldn't think of more than a few reasons 1. Money 2. Peer pressure 3. Feeling of financial insecurity 4. Respect to fellow beings

The first 3 points have been spoken about a million times so I would not touch upon that. The last "Respect to fellow beings" though is quite a tricky subject which only few people realize as long as they are in the society divided based on people's livelihood. I had a conversation with a friend, a British citizen of Indian origin who has lived all his life in Britain. A few interesting things that popped up were

1. In Britain or for that matter where there is a concept of minimum wage, everybody is treated with respect. Simply because everyone could afford a decent life. A janitor need not be looked down in anyway compared to a guy working as a banker. Moreover if not for the Janitor we will all be living in shit !!

2. A simple realization in my mind of how still servant maids are being treated in most Indian households. Where they are fed, what they are fed and how ?? What is the quality of life that someone who cleans up the streets, serves you in a restaurant or someone who does farming enjoys ?? A big negative !!

Your minds must have been asking you a lot more questions depending upon the sufferings you might have seen around you.

Teach your children human values before the value of money.. No profession is inferior.. Give them the choice to choose their profession. By forcing Engineering or Medical courses you might be killing another Sachin, P T Usha, Mother Teresa or even Mahatma Gandhi..

Will you see with something interesting next time.. Signing off :)

'Indian'ism

'First woman of Indian origin dies in space', 'Man of Indian origin leads Harvard B-School', 'Professor of Indian origin wins Nobel Prize' - I know these are not new phrases.. They keep coming up now and then and we get excited about them for a day or two.. Whole Indian media is behind them blowing it up to himalayan proportions.. Not really bad to publicise them because stories of victory are always a boost for growing people..

But what are we actually doing ? Aren't we searching for the so called 'Indian'ism in every single thing we possibly can ? The above are just few examples.. There are a lot more Vinod Khosla, Vinod Dham etc..

Why are these people capable of creating history are of just Indian origin and not actually Indians.. The reason is we let them go.. In an interview with Mr.Narayanamurthy of Infosys tech, there was one honest point that came up.. We have to make our country attractive for these history makers to stay and work for India.. We are not short of resources compared to several European countries but why are we light years behind ?

Giving a thought about the core of this issue, its quite clear what has to be done? Invest in the future rather than investing in building real estates for MNCs.. Make things attractive intellectually and financially for people who have the vision to grow big.. Speaking about just the government doesn't round up things. Its the people, the ones I call 'History makers' has to contribute their part in making the future attractive for the next generation..

I know when you finish reading the last few lines there are many hands up in the crowd with questions of "What about the foreign investment they bring into India ?" and most of us are unaware of the fact that the so called "Big money" in Indian terms is actually peanuts !!

So the bottom line is lets make it attractive for the Kingpins to stay here and being a Kingpin one should have a feeling to take up his nation to the next level rather than buying 30 year old Russian jets :)

I'm leaving with a note and resolution that "Lets make the next generation read the newspapers about an Indian professor winning Nobel prize"..