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..