A Looming Orwellian Summer

There is an eerie silence that follows an explosion. Something that sounds like vacuum, piercing your ears. It lasts for a while, and in that time frame everything becomes sluggish, everything exhibits a similar kind of vacuum silence - rather than emanating sound from itself, everything looks to be sucking it inside. In that moment, if you are a victim, you seek a place where you can hide and save your life, somehow. If you are a perpetrator, you celebrate, perhaps. But if you are an observer, you think, seek justification, & look to find at least some semblance of reason even in insanity.
I am playing the third role.
I try to empathize. With both of them.

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The victims, my heart goes out for them. No one was spared. Not women, not children, not the sick housed in a hospital ward which was bombed.

I stop midway, and abhor whatever I have thought about. Over the years, these are the very people who have been silent spectators to and some even perpetrators of violence, discrimination & exploitation of my community. Their innocence is a myth because both the meek spectator to injustice and the one who commits it – are equally guilty.

Do you think the unborn child or the 10 year old boy who died in the blasts understand even the literal meaning of the words ‘discrimination’ & ‘exploitation’?

In great causes, minor damages should be overlooked. There is always some collateral damage in a war.

A war is a physical act of conflict between military arms of two rival ideologies. The pre condition for any engagement to be termed a war is that the two sides should be armed. In case one of the sides is unarmed, the engagement is termed genocide. And if you call these damages something that can indeed be overlooked, why don’t you overlook the deaths of your kin caused at the hands of the State enforcement agencies during their search and cordon operations? Why do you then term it part of a bigger conspiracy against your community?

You are saying all this because you haven’t had any hardships in your life. You were born into a safe environment, with complete financial & social security. You got a hassle free existence, which you used to get educated, get a job & lead a privileged life. All this time, you least cared about what happened around you. Now, after settling down for a comfortable life to follow, you open the newspaper, get to see a news item about some explosion somewhere, and out you come with an opinion and a twisted logic to back it up!

You have to decide on which count do you hold me guilty (and thereby sentence me to death in a bomb blast) – being an enemy of your community, or having a more privileged background than yourself. If it is the latter, as seems apparent, is it not a similar birth-based discrimination you yourself harbour that you claim to be fighting against?
And what does drudgery brings about in men? For winners, a drive to excel; for others, jealousy. And a violence that brews from jealousy can NEVER be called a crusade. At best, it could be termed a vengeance, a revenge which you take on others for your failures!

It is indeed a crusade, as it is fought with valour by wronged people against the enemies of righteousness and religion. We are fighters of the God, unafraid of any consequences whatsoever, and are ready to sacrifice even our lives for the causes we believe in. If this is not crusade, then what is it? Where else, but from God, can we get such determination and success?

How do you define valour? Is it sheepishly entering a harmless crowded area, benefitting from the basic trust that humans show towards other humans? The trust which isn’t shown towards animals, like stray leopards, which are usually killed when they enter a human locality. Or does valour lie in leaving a scooter laden with explosives in that area, while walking out surreptitiously, carefully avoiding inquisitive glances on your way out? Or does it lie in celebrating your ‘combative action’ holed in a hideout hundreds of miles away from the point of action? Or perhaps in running away and hiding from the law enforcement agencies in a manner similar to what hunted animals adopt while evading entrapment? Or -in the case of being captured- in hiring a lawyer, applying for the Presidential pardon, and in parading your parents, wife & kids in front of the media to display a more ‘humane’ sight of yours to the public?
Isn’t it so with you that the mere possibility of danger or death (to you) in your actions seems to make you a coward? Don’t your actions to evade punishment end up validating the same law and constitution you claim to fight against? And from where does the word ‘sacrifice’ come in your dictionary? Sacrifice may be of two types. One is self-sacrifice, in which man himself dies for a cause, after waging a battle. In the other, man sacrifices a loved one – akin to Abraham’s intention of sacrificing Isaac, as I read in the Bible story. You do neither. What you indeed sacrifice is an unknown human, your compatriot mostly. What ‘loss’ do you refer to while talking about sacrifice?
And for your claims to divine warrior hood, here is something which I once read written somewhere –
“There are two types of warriors-
The first fights injustice, the second creates it.
The first protects the innocent, the second kills them.
The first sacrifices himself for others, the second sacrifices others.
The first is a tree that provides shade, the second is a tree for firewood.”

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And so on goes the conversation.
Meanwhile, people keep dying. Not by old age, not by diseases - which are greatest killers in our country, but by being blown into smithereens by crude bombs in the prime of their lives. What remain are the remnants – a severed head, a torn abdomen etc. of what had once been a vibrant, lively human, with its own set desires, dreams, and its capacity to carry other, much newer, lives on its back.
And meanwhile, India’s electronic media keeps asking for citizen reporters on the blasts. “We want pictures, videos” one popular news portal says, of anything that “you see around you regarding the attack.” Implicitly, it means that if you can spot gore, why reserve it for a private viewing – let’s share it across the world so that the wounds of the unfortunate become the cynosure of the public. Pictures taken hours after a blast are impact-zero ones, and hence don’t sell. So let’s get it straight from the horse’s eye!

Following the Ahmadabad blasts, in an interview with the Gujarat Home Minister, a journalist pops the following points - “There is a perception that such blasts were expected in Gujarat after the 2002 riots. Also, add to that the dimension of most riots victims still not having got legal justice.” and “Some people argue that when riot victims do not get legal justice they feel like taking revenge.” Hats off to the lady, who did exactly the task for which the terrorists planted all those bombs! She, through her ‘insights’, echoed the very ‘logic’ that the terrorists so erringly tried to champion – that in order to make the deaf listen, you need explosions! Only, unlike in Bhagat Singh’s case(if you recognize the dialog in the previous sentence), these explosions killed innocents. Why does a discussion involving mindless, savage acts like bomb blasts needs to seek any explanation/logic for the occurrence of the same, everytime?!!
Lastly, another piece of rattling stupidity – a news portal recently published the name of an anti-national, venom spewing, (and absolutely irrational, if I may add) blog which is written by suspected terrorists, in a speculative article regarding the new names acquired by familiar terror outfits in India. They didn’t publish the link, noble souls, but the esteemed fellows don’t seem to know that naming anything controversial in a public news forum actually incites a lot of readers to seek it out, and read it through, especially in an information friendly world like ours. I’m pretty sure that the morale of the blog writer in question would have soared by quite a few degrees, seeing so many hits all of a sudden, mores so because the blog was almost inconsequential and irrelevant for most of its pre-fame life. Secondly, his ‘message’ may now actually be in a position to spread into some unpolluted but nevertheless fertile minds, thanks to the site in question. And how is the blog, the one and only update of which came almost an year back, still floating in the public domain? What have the scissor-quick honchos of the Department of Telecommunications and Information & Broadcasting ministry been doing, apart from banning television channels & ‘obscene’ films? And the only sane answer to this problem, which will eventually conceive in the minds of these ‘information controllers’ would be - and which I personally fear the most - block all blogs; similar to the traditional strategy that has been employed to get rid of all the world’s evils over the centuries.
The same strategy that seems to make sense in this mad world today - destruction– of people if they differ from you, of information if it doesn’t corroborate what you say. Simple, efficient & with immediate results. At its start you have something, at its end there is nothing. Nothing but thin air. And you don’t need any theorems to prove zilch.
An Orwellian summer somehow doesn’t seem to be so far away now.

Impromtu...

Well, here goes - three thoughts crossed my mind today- they suddenly morph into four as I type this.
Third: I thought of writing straight here, right here on this 'New Post' online textpad, instead of creating something on my wordpad and then copying it here. My first post was done this way, and it also became my last one done with the mentioned modus operandi because of a sudden blogspot whitewash of the page which took away all of my work just when I was about to save it. Ever been robbed? Well that only could express the exact sentiment I experienced that moment. Then onwards, I wrote everything in my smug Windows Wordpad, because of a sorry situation involving a 'good-for-nothing' Microsoft Office 2007 which didn't work in spite of a 300 MB download due to subscription expiry, and religiously copied everything here. When you write something in a wordpad, its something very sculptor-like. You start off with a premise, as a sculptor starts with a stone slab having some vision in his mind. Then you start crafting and chiseling letters/slabs into words/statues as you go on. Finally, you smoothen the edges & sharp corners, and, after a final re examination of your work, place it for viewing in a display. I want to move away from that model this time. Let this one come straight from the gut! Let there be no editing and no retakes. Let there be no spell checks and no grammar recommendations. Let this one come the old way - not as old as bhojpatras and not as new as Office 2007 (can't help but crib about it). Let there be no scramble for structure and none for a classical approach while writing.
Let there be light!
(Our greatest fortune is that God doesn't file copyright infringement suits!)
First: My Orkut fortune today said : 'You are going to have some new clothes'. Got me thinking. No fortune teller - mystic, astrologist, cheap robotic machines or even our very own fortune cookies has ever given such a prediction! They had their own reasons for doing so - the first two for obvious commercial concerns & the last two to escape bludgeoning through the hands of customers. So obviously, this prediction is just a case of silly whatevers. But the case of 'what if its not?' made me think a little. Usually, statements regarding activities like shopping for apparels, which fall within your range, are very enticing to entertain. Imagine yourself reading that fortune, then moving out of your place, chancing upon a 'SALES ON' board at one of the retail outlets nearby - something which you wanted to happen since some time. Because of that fortune's sheer rarity, those words stick to your mind, and the first thought that crosses your mind upon seeing that board would be to shop - especially after seeing that sale tag. And after you are done, you would also revel in being a part of events that led to a prophecy coming true! Now imagine this : Orkut has a tie up with that store, and you have been manipulated into a buying spree with the store. Well, not exactly manipulation, this; but smart tie-up of business and technology. Imagine the consequences, if this becomes run of the mill. Every web user has done his share of zodiac analysis, name analysis, numerological analysis, psychological tests, personality mapping and various other tests of different occult & psychology related disciplines at one time or the other on the web. The reports generated by these usually are very generic and which may advice folks in the matters of general merchandise like stones, metals etc to wear. If these are interspersed closely with business areas like retail, imagine the amount of money that this could bring! Users would actually become the target consumers of a totally different marketing campaign - one that exploits the inherent instinct of every human, i.e. interest in the sciences which are not empirical in nature. We would be bombed with heavy advertising of a product without us even getting aware of it. Though here, brand unification would be of foremost importance for the business houses because a prediction cant mention that the shirt you are going to purchase in some time would be a 'Louis Philippe'! Is this duping? HELL, yes! But isn't that a norm online these days!
Second: We have an office canteen in place, run by Sodexho. Sodexho is a foodservice company operational in many states in India, and therefore recognized in those many states in India. For self promotional purpose they have tied up with many food outlets across the country and have come out with this concept of Sodexho passes, which are recognized by the same as a form of currency. As my firm has a tie up with Sodexho, we, as employees, get a booklet of passes whose worth is decided by our designations in the organization. Their equivalent worth in hard money is deducted from our monthly salaries and is given a tax exemption by the government. These passes can be used in our canteen and also outside at the outlets which have collaborated with Sodexho. Now, our canteen runs on the prepaid principle, i.e. we first pay for the dish we want to have, take the bill thus received to the person in charge of the food counter, who, in turn, services us with our request. Obviously, there are lines involved in waiting for both the cashier & the food counter guy. The payment mode is three pronged - 1. Hard cash, 2. Sodexho pass, 3. In house Sodexho coupon. 1 & 2 can be used with the cashier, who in turn gives you the bill. 3 can be used straight at the food counter guy, so it nullifies any effort & time wasted in standing in the first queue. This in house coupon booklet can be obtained at any point of time from the cashier by payment of an equivalent amount of cash or the Sodexho passes. So thats how the whole show runs. Now, something happened yesterday which made realize the simplest reason for most of the conflict in this world; yes, something - even in such an insipid setup. Here goes. I dont have have any in house coupons with me, as I procrastinate when it comes to buy them. Today, when I got up from my seat for lunch, I was feeling particularly hungry. This could be ascribed to an idiotic decision of skipping breakfast for the day. So, I ambled downstairs to the cafeteria during the mad hour full of crazy, hungry humans which is called the lunch time. To my utter dismay, the cashier's line was quite long and I had to wait for around 10 minutes or so to get my bill. As I approached the food counter queue, I spotted, from a distance, a couple of females getting into the queue. I hurried on, and before anyone else could reduce the distance between the food and my stomach (esophagal feets notwithstanding!), I got myself in that line. The hurry was actually due to the dish I was planning to have and in whose distribution line I stood. It was naan, and naan is usually served hot. So, it is brought from the kitchen in pairs, triplets or quadruples as soon as it is cooked and not stored in vessels like the other forms of food. Therefore, it may happen so that even though you are the second in line, the person in front of you may get served and you along with three people who are behind you may get served together only after an interval stretching upto 5 minutes more, this, being irrespective of the fact that you came earlier for that naan! This can be quite a pain in the arse considering the fact that the thought of food first crossed your mind 20 long minutes back, and you have been hungry ALL along, trying to find food like a scavenger on prowl. So, naturally, the hurry! Anyways, when I got there, at the end of that line behind those two ladies, I could see, amidst their excited chatter, their Sodexho in house coupons clutched firmly in their hands.
I got inflamed.
After all, it was I who did all that hardwork in waiting patiently for my turn in the cashier line, it was I who had hurried down to this line in order to get served earlier. And what these good for nothing nubiles did? Just walk down from their comfortable chairs in their modules upto this very line & decided what they wanted to have mentally - thats it! Done! They will be serviced with their request before me! As usual, I immediately got into contemplative mode - "Why isn't hardwork rewarded in this world? Why do the men of labour always languish in ignominy and denial?" What those girls did was to apply their minds, get themselves the coupons to free themselves from the queue hassles, and all my physical effort goes waste! Apply their minds - this hit me! Isn't this the root of all conflict in the world around us - this tussle between men of labour & men of mind? Trade Unions Vs Factory owners. Small time vegetable vendors Vs Reliance Foodmart. AAI strike Vs Privatisation of airports. In short, Poor Vs Rich, or, to put it in a more apt manner - Communism Vs Capitalism. Before this thought, I was tilted more towards the 'right' - pun intended, courtesy Ms Rand. Now, after experiencing the 'left' - (ditto!) side of the above given analogies, I find myself shifted a little towards the centre of the balance. Physical hardwork ending up being unrewarded can be a very frustrating experience. So much so that it may actually make you blind to reason. Today's is a knowledge based society, and any labour without a mind behind it could be equivalent to 100 fools trying to push back the Great Wall of China by brute force. Also, applying mind without putting in, or extracting, physical labour would be equivalent to winning Age of Empires II and actually imagining yourself to be the King of the world.

So these were the registered ones. The fourth one was a feeling of amazement at how increasingly subjective I'm getting these days on this space. First my views on Theism, then the defense of my room, then my unabashed display of fanship for IO, and then finally - this! So, are the days of objective & impersonal reporting gone at this space? Well, you never know!
There was a fifth one too, sorry to hide it till now! No, you dont need to throw up your hands in the air in exasperation, this one is a serious observation. Read the order again : 3-1-2. Ever seen Olympic Medal ceremonies?
Drop the idea of carnal harm, its only your computer screen you are gonna end up damaging...

The Great Indian Media Circus

We, the people have been addicted to the media since time immemorial. Mankind’s difference from the other species has lied in the fact that we want to know, to be aware of what happens around us. The happenings may be positive, negative or even grotesque – its not that we don’t refrain from making judgements, its just that we aspire to gain knowledge, always. We are curious, and, though a small sound will turn the heads of both an animal (the precise definition of which is highly debatable!) and a man alike, it would be the man who will go forward and ascertain the cause for its occurrence. We think, and are constantly on a lookout for upgradation of knowledge – a trait which was so indispensable in our "George of the Jungle" days!
The word "media" conveys exactly the same meaning as is cited in the Oxford dictionary, which, given today’s times, is quite amusing. It goes like:
"the means of communication, as radio and television, newspapers, and magazines, that reach or influence people widely"
Media acts as a bearer of information from the source to the people, its utility being understood when its audience is far away. As all of our five senses are satisfied in our quest for knowledge by this enterprise, it becomes one of the most powerful forces in our existence, because, as food nourishes our body, media nourishes our mind. And, ala Aunt May: "With great power comes great responsibility.", I just wish the media guys had watched Spiderman! In my opinion, Indian media can be summed up in two words – "Sensationalism unrestricted". True, it sells. In order to avoid getting wrongly interpreted, I would like to clarify that media never was, and should never be philanthropy – it IS a business, meant to create wealth and employment for scores of people and should remain a profit making venture. My only argument is that a business transaction between two people which results in gain for one and loss for the other can’t be termed as a business; it is, instead, a fraud. The irony here is that, much of the audience the media caters to doesn’t realize its loss, for the loss here is entirely of the human thought.
Consider this- Rakhi Sawant getting an airtime of 30 minutes LIVE on a show where the anchor is quizzing her about the kiss controversy, and where, at the end of the show, she is cheekily asked by the anchor to "perform" for the audience, to which Ms Sawant gladly obliges, gyrating to her numbers while giving a thumbs up for playing her favorite song to the "DJ" present!! 30 minutes live for THAT! True, its quite possible to think that the moment you take Ms. Sawant out of the picture, the case will hit you as actual sexual exploitation of a woman, and most of us wont be amused as we were when it came out, and, in that case, the media may be applauded in giving her a platform to speak out, regardless of her image. But couldn’t anyone see the useless arguments she was making in favour of her case - that "bhartiya nari" rhetoric reappearing every 5 minutes to prove her point- and the anchor asking questions on the costumes she wears in her videos while discussing an exploitation charge! These people were looking like giving a live example of the meaning of the word "Astray"! If that was the intention, they can better go and be part of a video GRE word tutorial rather than appearing on national television 24x7! Mika cashed on the scandal in a smarter way by making a satirical video about it, because, in the end, that’s what it deserved!
And this- Indian cricket team getting an astonishing 16 hours of coverage spread across various news channels after the South African ODI fiasco in which even a sneeze of a cricketer is scrutinized down to every nook and cranny. We were seeing analysis and counter analysis and frenzied criticism using a language that would be at a wafer thin distance from being profane – the difference lying only in the fact that swear words were not used. Also the same team is applauded after an almost guaranteed home series victory against a not so strong opposition! Why is the reaction on cricket always knee jerk & senseless by the media, when what we expect is an intelligent analysis coupled with a matured unbiased viewpoint – this being hallmark of quality sports reporting throughout the planet. I don’t think that the nation has been cricket crazy since generations, most of the hype and the overwhelming importance accredited to the sport is media generated, and would remain so until it decides to mend its ways. I would like to dissect the tagline of a popular Bollywood gossip show –"For news, views, opinions, scandals, scoops and gossip come to us" – leave out the scandal, scoop & gossip part for the entertainment section of the news channel guys, keep the former with sports reporting!
Also there was this "story" about a woman principal and an elderly manager of a school being beaten up by a bunch of rowdies in Muradabad. Termed as a heinous act and reflective of the changing social norms by the media, the video, ironically, has been shot with such poetic clarity that one wonders about the deftness with which it was shot. While lamenting police & government for inaction in the aftermath, what action was taken by the morally correct media? True, media’s job is to bring out objective facts for the populace to see/hear and form their views, but seeing the video, which carried as disturbing visuals as a woman being pulled by her hair, should and would spur any human being into action, and that includes the cameraman. In fact, even after the woman was knocked unconscious, she was still being zoomed into by the cameraman! The Gateway of India molestation case’s video is justified, as in such a swarm of people, the best thing that could be done was to just shoot. But here, where only a handful of people where assaulting a lady and an elderly man, surely something could have been done.
The result - A "sensational" news story; the impact – Watch any such act in future from a distance. Is this the "societal" change these channels pledge to bring with their reporting?
There are so many examples, including visual footage of a VC of a university being slapped by a student leader, of reckless reporting and the purpose they serve is to tell the society that the previously unthinkable incidents are now happening ushering the dawn of a new era which looks very gloomy indeed. And that there is NO light at the end of this tunnel, the best thing that we can do is to watch these channels & lament our surroundings!
True, the English channels are marginally better than their Hindi counterparts in the way that they are starting to realize their social responsibilities and are mixing it wisely with business, which, in my opinion, is the best formula in today’s times. The recent successes include the Jessica Lal & Priyadarshini Mattoo cases, and the exposure of the questions for money scam of Parliament. But, as the Supreme Court sagaciously warned, raking up of cases by the News Channels should not be the only driving force for the lower courts to act speedily; the process should be judicial as prescribed by the law, because such a trend would end up being even more unconstitutional than justice being denied. And no, I’m not being cynical here, asking the channels to be more socially active and then ending up supporting a verdict that contradicts the same. Instead I’m trying to emphasize just two points – Make a start, and don’t overdo it. And the current trend in Indian media can be summed up by this comment from a renowned columnist:
"The problem is not that we sell ourselves, that everyone does; the problem is that we sell ourselves to the lowest bidder!"