I me my country

Last week I had the pleasure to meet some of the participants of an international conference which was held in my college. These participants and guests came from across the globe, and I was assigned the role of accompanying some of them from Lucknow airport to Kanpur. Most of these people were visiting India for the first time.

So, as an Indian what was my duty? Should I not praise my country, and let them know about her glory? But how could I do that amidst all the conspicuous ails it suffers from, which are so very evident?

As soon as you step out of the airport, even before you could cross the road to get to the parking, you will see the sidewalks littered with wrappers, empty plastic bottles, cigarette butts and what have you and no later have you stepped into the parking lot you will be accosted by beggars, in their tattered clothes and disheveled hair, pleading for money. So here you are, with an Australian , who is already overwhelmed to see so many people around, being bugged by beggars. As if this wasn't enough, the pan masala chewing driver will spit right in front of you to send the message loud and clear - "Welcome to India".

All that, within ten minutes of stepping into India. With that introduction of my country, the success story of India in the last decade sounds no less than a fairy tale. And, you wonder if nuisance of spitting and growth rate of 10% can go hand in hand ?

The 100Km ride from Lucknow to Kanpur is a nightmare for an unaware person. The roller coaster ride lasts for 2-3 hrs and the sign boards reading "Keep Left" are a travesty of traffic rules. While the guest seemed to enjoy the ride, finding it exciting and adventurous, wasn't it embarrassing for me, an Indian? Furthermore, the driver who never used his seat belt, kept opening his door in the moving car to spit out the pan masala ,while everyone thought that chewing pan masala is our national time pass.

So, despite all that we have achieved and all that super power media hype, I tried to make out what opinion of India these people had before coming to India. While we may think that things are changing, I felt that the global image of India was no better. These people were not surprised to see the littered roads, nor did the beggars surprised them. They were more or less aware of Indian roads, traffic and driving behavior, they were not amazed to see the cows blocking the traffic, they only found it fantasy like. They were overwhelmed to see the incredible things, they had only heard before.

So, at last, what is my duty as an Indian? Am I supposed to tell people not to spit on roads and pavements and in that lonely corner? Should I tell them not to horn incessantly, to drive responsibly? What do I do about beggars? I don't know. The least I can do is not to do these things myself, apart from keeping my fingers and toes crossed, that the winds of change will start blowing soon.

The great Indian Dream

Back in 1947 when India got its freedom there was a wave of new hope and enthusiasm among its citizen, a strong feeling of oneness and a new mission to be accomplished. In those days India was in the hands of credible politicians, who had themselves travailed to make India free. They had a vision. But as always, what India has always portrayed as its strength, its diversity, turned out to be one of its major weakness. With myriad of opinion about myriad of problems that India faced, to come out with a solution is not a trivial matter. Change was necessary and change takes time.

It was during that time, India fell into the hand of politicians, majority of whom were irresponsible, lacked vision and were there only to fill their own pockets. Thus, corruption got into the system, and since then we haven't been able to recover from it. It was these leaders, who just wanted a vote bank. They used the religious and cultural diversity of this country to divide them, to win votes. They instigated groups against each other, for nothing but a chair which in itself is a source of money. Everything boils down to power and money. They cared not two bits about the country.

Numerous examples of irresponsible governance could be found from the post Independent history. The Babri Masjid demolition, a savage act instigated and supported by politicians. Trillion of rupees have been engulfed by these corrupt monsters. There narrow parochial attitude have led to India's bleak situation in terms of governance and administration. The bureaucrats, they make good policies, on paper all the five year plans look highly structured and beneficial and if implemented efficiently can solve most of the problems of India, including several sepratist movements, which are another nuisance. But the services are not delivered, the red tape eats away all the pulp and what reaches the multitude are just the left outs.

Corruption levels in India are an embarrassment. The highly controversial CWG have caused a lot of shame in international media, not only the last minute arrangements being criticized, but also the scams and controversies that have shrouded the game's organization have tarnished the already not so good Indian image. The astronomical figure of taxpayers money that has been put into the games has gone into the pockets of Kalamadi and coworkers. Not only is this shameful but also outrageous to think that the money that could have fed the 46% hungry and malnourished Indian children will now be used for the luxury of his Highness Kalmadi.

Even after all this misguidance it turns out that India has been able to do decent, at least the ever increasing GDP promises a prosperous future. With the surge of industrialization and growth of private sectors, it seems that things would turn out fine. The ethics and honesty prevalent in the private sector is praiseworthy and bureaucracy needs to learn a good lesson from them. Also, it seems Indians are learning from the history. The surprising absence of any major opposition from the masses aftrer the ayodhoya verdict, it seems that the multitude is rising above these parochial issues and have become more ambitious. What is sad though are the regressive attitude from political parties, who don't seem to get satisfied after all the bloodshed and hatred they have already caused. Still, they are adamant to play politics on thease sensitive issues. I hope the masses remain calm and prove me right and the politicians, well they are hopeless.

We really need good rich honest politicians.

there are times ..

the world as I see it had always been difficult, a proposition to which I have no clues , none !! blank is the right word may be , I can only feel things , I have sensory organs , but how do I know that the red as i feel is the red everybody else feels or for that matter the blue, the pink !! ohh no , what I am I doing again , I shouldn't everybody else know how I feel , they'll think of me as mad , but why ?

blank again !!

a tribute to bg : a good old friend

BG oh Bg ...

mera sabka sabse pyaara bg ..

rail gadi se bhi nyaara bg ..

sathi sabse jyada bg ..

bg teri kasam ab iss blog most read blog nahi banaya toh tere sar ke rahe sahe baal shave karwa dunga ...

and listen people this is a blog .. " with the lights out " .. don't u dare to think ki hamara bulb fuse hai .. it's just that i don;t like artificial light much .. but man is now a bitch of technology and even if we don;t like things we do it .. coz that's the way we are programmed .. to use technology and use it to generate more technology so that measure of our bitchness increases for us .. and finally everybody seeks a world free of technolgy .. people go to beaches , mountain tops , valleys and gorges ... may be people who started it all didn;t realise what all this technology will do to us mere mortals .. but now i think there are sane people around ... who realise this (the harms of technolgy and the ends of it ) .. people like wingies , who are as far from generating new technology as I am from capturing the whole world :D ..

So, God help me and BG illuminate this world with the lights out ...

to see it as u have made bare eyed and not by the mask of technology ..

ultimatum

Since jaikrit vatsal has decided not to write in this blog, i have decided to fire him ....except if he writes something.

Jacky you dirty stinking crabby scrawny sonvabeech write something.

We started with movies and musci and art ...but now let's just write about anything ....from current affair to financial markets topsy turvy rides, from akshay kumar to swami nithyananda....from udghosh to hall 1 ki putai ...let's do it .....let's make this blog legend...wait for it ....dry ....

'a clockwork orange'

I hate him , I hate him and want him to die, but that way he won’t suffer, I want him to suffer, the way he made others suffer, and even worse. He is the most savage, most abhor able, most despicable servile trash vonny grahzny character I have encountered in a book ever. Yes, that is alexander , and did he suffer? Did he pay for his deeds?

If there is good, if you had a blessing that went by the name of mahtma Gandhi, here we have a person who is bad, and it all comes naturally to him, to be bad, to inflict suffering on others and relish it , red red krovvy real horrorshow!!!. Now that makes him an aberration, human beings were born to be kind, to be kind and helpful to others, in order to expect similar returns from others. So, if we have an aberration among ourselves of this kind, a person for whom music is an inspiration for violence, what do we do with him? Isn’t that the reason why law was created in the first place? But something which law doesn’t clarify is the purpose of law,. If correction be the purpose then we have failed and failed horrendously. In 1984 , they changed Winston, they made him believe it, that 2+2 could be 5, could be 3, and till he didn’t have a deep rooted believe in it he was made to suffer. But in here Alex , the epitome of ultra violence, was not made to suffer in the proportions of his heinous act ( two years of jail term, where he could listen to his favorite music followed by a fortnight of video watching can’t be called suffering for an insane thief, bully, murderer, and rapist.) . So they took away his freedom, his choices from him , so is that unfair? They couldn’t change in a way his natural inclination to violence all they took away was ability to perform the act. So, in my opinion though he is not cured completely at least he won’t be able to inflict upon others his natural self. And if you think taking away his music and art from him was a cheap trick, hello , let me remind you what that inspired him to do. So if he couldn’t slooshy Ludwig von or wolfgang Amadeus that was because they instructed him to kill.

So he had a chance to change, but change can’t be forced on oneself, it has to come naturally and that’s what happened at the end of the book which makes you feel happy, for at last the society is spared of an animal. But not for him, only thing that makes you feel good is that there is hope, because youth they say in a way is like an animal but the best part is that you grow up.

But did he suffer ? did he pay for his unpardonable heinous deeds? At the end of the book he was cured. He had the freedom to think 2+2 = 4 and that is what I hate. Never he felt sorry for what he did, while he was selfish enough to think about himself all the time .” where did I figure in all this ?” He had the temerity of taking help from a man whose wife he killed and not enough courage to tell the man in his face. I hate him and I wish he rots in hell and that is why I like the book, I have seen heroes, I have seen villains, but well here Anthony Burgess gives you your own anti hero. I wish alex could always be ‘a clockwork orange’.