Sunday, July 27, 2008

Jaipur, Bengalooru, and now Ahmedabad. Next destination/s: ________.

And what does union home minister Shivraj Patil, second to PM in internal security matters, say immediately after those sickening explosions in Ahmedabad? "I dont want to say that someone is to blame, or that someone should have done something. That's not what I want to say. I wont say it's because someone didnt do their job. There is no point going into all that. We dont want to say such things..." and so on like an idiot for five minutes on TV. Honest. The evidence is on your TV screens.

Here is a man who knows how to pad up big-time.
1. I dont understand how anyone can be so sick as to take THIS opportunity to jump at a rival's throat.
2. I dont understand how a responsible office-bearer can actually play political games first thing without first making a sympathetic statement for the victims, at least for the record.
3. I dont understand how he takes so long and so many words to say "Look, BJP is responsible."
4. I dont understand how we vote for such yucky, sticky, dirty people.

We have not just a cold-blooded, unfeeling government at the helm of affairs at the Centre, we have brazen and reckless thugs who have the gall to push their political agenda upfront in your face even while you are mourning the dead.

Not only their ministers, Congress henchmen --known as spokesmen-- such as one Rajiv Sponge were all over TV channels in a flash, almost grabbing the question like a footballer to start shooting obscenities at the BJP. They did the same thing Kargil-time. They kept ranting about how the Vajpayee government was sleeping all through and not doing enough. And when we won that war, they glumly shrugged, but we should have not allowed that to happen in the first place.

Considering the Congress never makes any mistakes-- remember all the blasts in Jammu and Kashmir for the last four decades, Mumbai in 1993 and thereafter, every year, Delhi, and wherever else -- its first reaction to a blast is to check out the government in place. If it's the BJP, the Congis slap on some make-up cake(ya, they actually look like they will peel any time) and present themselves post-haste at the ever-hungry TV studios like good boys at work to do momma's bidding.

(When 9/11 happened, the US Opposition didnt go gunning for Bush & Co. They united in grief, shared the anguish of the government and the people, and never talked about "intelligence failure." They knew this is not the occasion to strike. This point has been made by several intelligence officials, but alas, always in private, never in the press.)

I think it's disgusting that we vote for these scumbags. I hate talking about them because they are beneath contempt. And what's really unbelievable is that everybody else is seeing what I see and yet not seeing it. Am I the only one seeing them the way they are? Everyone else is voting them in. Do you?
Let's all get them out of the way. Vote Mayawati, vote Lallu, if you like, but not these Original
Sins.

By the way, does anybody else also get the feeling the serial explosions have a political mastermind?

P.S. When Mumbai trains cracked up on July 11, 2006, BJP didnt jump to studios to scream blue murder at the Congress. It issued a dignified condemnation. Just ONE case in point. Should suffice.

Here's a piece from Le monde. To me, its mostly mumbo jumbo. All I can recognise are two names: Tushar Gandhi's and mine.

If anyone cares to translate, she will get a favourable mention on this blog. (What else can a journalist offer?)



Tushar Gandhi, profession arrière-petit-fils
Gandhi, c'est lui. Lui que les journalistes appellent pour obtenir des informations sur la vie du Mahatma. Lui qui commémore, à Bombay, le 60e anniversaire de son assassinat, mercredi 30 janvier. Lui que les marques du monde entier contactent pour être autorisées à exploiter l'image de son arrière-grand-père. "Je suis son emblème. Un peu comme la mascotte des Jeux olympiques. Une mascotte qui ne fait pas de sport, mais qui est dans tous les médias", avoue sans honte celui qui veut défendre la philosophie du Mahatma dans une Inde en pleine modernité.
Tushar Gandhi est loin de ressembler à son illustre ancêtre. Sa voix grave et son corps massif sont à l'exact opposé de la maigre silhouette de son arrière-grand-père. Cela n'empêche pas certains de ses concitoyens de lui toucher les pieds en signe de respect. "C'est comme s'ils croyaient toucher ceux du Mahatma. Cela me met très mal à l'aise."

Tushar Gandhi ne sait pas exactement où il est né. Sa mère a accouché il y a 48 ans dans le compartiment de première classe d'un train reliant deux gares du Maharashtra, dans la région de Bombay. Mais ses origines tiennent dans son seul nom. Dès sa plus tendre enfance, son arrière-grand-père, remplit son existence. Il réclame des histoires de princes et d'aventuriers à sa grand-mère ? Elle ne fera que lui conter les épisodes de la vie du Mahatma. Il veut répondre aux coups donnés par ses camarades de classe ? Sa grand-mère lui intime l'ordre de ne pas leur répondre par la violence. Voilà pourquoi, lorsque sa mère vient le chercher à l'école, elle le retrouve souvent en train de se faire battre par les élèves de sa classe. "Ces événements auront eu au moins le mérite de me rapprocher de mon arrière-grand-père", concède-il en souriant.

Tushar Gandhi n'a connu que les cendres du héros de son enfance. Le souvenir de la poussière sacrée lui glissant entre les mains le rend encore tout tremblant. "Mon corps vibrait", se souvient-il. C'était en 1997. Il venait de découvrir l'une des rares urnes contenant les cendres du Mahatma, dans le coffre d'une banque de l'Orissa. Au terme d'une longue bataille juridique avec l'administration indienne, le coffret était finalement vidé à la rencontre de deux fleuves sacrés, le Gange et la Yamuna, comme Gandhi l'aurait souhaité. Lui qui détestait les reliques et avait la hantise d'être idolâtré.

Pourtant, en Inde, Gandhi est bien devenu un dieu. Les musées qui portent son nom ne cessent de se multiplier dans le pays. "Gandhi est vénéré, mais ses idées sont inconnues et son rêve abandonné", déplore son arrière-petit-fils. Pour propager sa philosophie, il a créé un site Internet regroupant toutes les archives existant sur Gandhi.

Inévitablement, la vie du Mahatma se confond avec celle de Tushar Gandhi. Lorsqu'on l'appelle sur son téléphone portable, l'hymne préféré du Mahatma est diffusé en guise de tonalité. Dans le salon de son appartement de Bombay, où il vit avec sa femme et ses deux enfants, l'image du petit homme frêle enveloppé d'une tunique banche est partout. En photo, en figurine de bronze posée sur le téléviseur ou encore en dessin sur une porcelaine installée sur le buffet.

Pour transmettre son héritage, Tushar Gandhi n'avait sans doute pas d'autre choix que de s'imprégner de l'existence de celui qui avait coutume de dire : "Ma vie est mon message." Il a quitté son emploi de graphiste pour se consacrer entièrement à la recherche des plus petites anecdotes concernant son arrière-grand-père et mieux le faire connaître. On apprend ainsi que l'illustre ancêtre a été un précurseur dans la protection de l'environnement. "Il avait l'habitude de coller les lettres l'une sur l'autre pour écrire sur le verso vierge. Ça le terrifiait d'imaginer que l'on pouvait gâcher autant d'arbres. Le seul fait que nous n'ayons pas conscience des conséquences de nos actes individuels l'inquiétait", assure-t-il.

Gandhi n'appartient pas qu'à l'histoire. C'est aussi une marque gérée avec soin par son arrière-petit-fils qui, après avoir tenté de l'exploiter commercialement au bénéfice de la fondation Mahatma Gandhi, créée en 1997, y a renoncé sur fond de polémiques. Aujourd'hui, il autorise uniquement les publicités qui ne sont pas en contradiction avec les principes du père fondateur de l'Inde. Lorsque le constructeur allemand Audi lui a demandé l'autorisation d'utiliser l'image de son arrière-grand-père pour une publicité, le refus a été catégorique : "Vous imaginez Gandhi vendre une voiture de luxe allemande ? Si la voiture avait été hybride, respectueuse de l'environnement, j'aurais certainement accepté." En bon gestionnaire de marques, Tushar Gandhi défend la sienne : "Gandhi est la marque la plus populaire au monde. Soixante ans après sa mort, il est le seul homme susceptible de déclencher un acte d'achat partout dans le monde."

Le pouvoir évocateur de cette marque explique l'entrée en politique de Tushar Gandhi. Il a été contacté par le Parti du Congrès, auquel appartenait le père de l'indépendance de l'Inde lors de sa lutte contre la colonisation britannique. Mais ça a été rapidement la désillusion. Le parti a refusé de l'investir dans le village natal de son arrière-grand-père, au motif que sa caste lui aurait fait perdre de nombreuses voix, alors même que Gandhi, tout au long de sa vie, avait combattu la ségrégation des castes. "Tushar n'aurait jamais dû rentrer en politique. Tout l'art de Gandhi était justement de faire de la politique sans être un politicien", regrette Seema Kamdar, une journaliste basée à Bombay.

Désormais, Tushar Gandhi consacre son temps à des projets humanitaires dans les villages, "ces lieux désertés par le boom économique du pays", et multiplie les conférences. Certaines de ses déclarations choquent et sont sévèrement critiquées. Lorsque, par exemple, il avoue publiquement qu'il n'est pas végétarien, comme l'était son arrière grand-père. "Une offense gratuite et inutile lorsqu'on fait partie de sa famille", déplore Jitendra Desai, membre d'une organisation gandhienne basée à Ahmedabad.

Son livre sur l'assassinat de Gandhi a suscité les réactions les plus violentes. Let's Kill Gandhi ! ("Tuons Gandhi !") met en cause un groupe de Brahmanes, la caste des prêtres hindous, dans la préparation de l'assassinat de Gandhi. L'effigie de Tushar a été brûlée et il a reçu des menaces de mort. "J'ai clamé haut et fort que ce serait un honneur d'être assassiné, comme mon arrière-grand-père, pour avoir défendu mes idées", répond Tushar Gandhi. Ce qui l'inquiète davantage, c'est plutôt ce cauchemar fait récemment, et dans lequel le monde entier avait oublié Gandhi. Sans sourciller, il ajoute : "Si cela arrivait, je préférerais mourir."

Tushar Gandhi.

Julien Bouissou, Le Monde, 31.01.08

http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique/article/2008/01/30/tushar-gandhi-profession-arriere-petit-fils_1005359_3216.html#ens_id=1005283

Friday, July 25, 2008

What is a human being that does not hurt?
I am extremely hard-hearted about people without a heart and all heart for people who are soft and sweet. :-)
This is not my interpretation about myself but what everybody says about me and I think this is more or less true. Whether right or wrong, I am terrible with people I dislike and I am quite nice with people I find genuine.
I am a reasonably good judge of character but I have made mistakes. The first was in college, when a friend sweet-talked me to penetrate my highly popular group (we were rowdy as hell, never mind my serious bespectacled demeanour)
I realised a day before our class 'social' I had singlehandedly pulled off that she was just so jealous of me. Just as you see in the movies, I was wounded before my big day.
My mum saw my face. She quietly came to me, patted my back, and said, "what's wrong?" I said I never expected this girl to stab me in the back like this. It hurts.
Mum heard me out and calmly said, "It's terrible but you are much bigger than this. Don't let her affect you." There was nothing extraordinary in her words but she was extraordinary. Her energy and power of emotional empathy soothed me so much I instantly felt better and stronger.
On the day of the social, the hurt was there, my eyes welled with tears and for the first time, my friends saw that I too was vulnerable. They rallied around me, and the next thing I knew, I had simply blotted her out of my life. Just like that.
She was around that day, but she had stopped existing for me. And the social went off beautifully. I was compering, performing and coordinating but I didnt remember her a single second and my event was a runaway hit, the talk of all college.

Wily nily, this has become standard strategy ever since. Each time somebody misbehaves, or hurts me, I wipe that person out of my consciousness. It's often interpreted as arrogance but I seriously don't see the person at all for me to think about him or her.
Once, one of these riff-raffs got antsy and demanded,"Why are you behaving like a royal highness, and pretending I dont exist?" And I didnt know what to say to her because I never really went out of my way to ignore her. It happens by default.
Some part of me decides that I shouldnt be wasting time on this worthless person, or it tells me, "He/she doesnt value you." So off he/she goes.

The only time I kicked serious ass was last year, when someone spread some utterly laughable rumours about me. Well-meaning friends saw through it and told me. Ill-meaning friends latched on and spread the word.
I was shocked and hurt that someone could be so malicious but lost no time in hitting back. Usually, I dont hit back because, as I said, to me, such people are beneath contempt and once I blot them out of my life, there is no question of wasting my energy on a non-entity. But this time, I just felt like doing it. So attack I did and the person smarted under it forever, not expecting a non-violent person like to me to get ferocious.
Sometimes, these guys spice up your life.

People get hurt all the time. When some of them confide in me, I tell them to ask themselves one question: "Have my parents brought me up with so much love and care so that I spend some precious moments of my life agonising over this person who means nothing to me?" And pop goes the anguish. Yes, some of it stays but then this gives you tremendous courage to cope.

Try it and tell me.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

You guys are going to call me absolutely `middle-class' (I love Ratna Pathak Shah for the way she says it in `Sarabhai vs Sarabhai') for this. But I genuinely believe DD National is the best Indian channel we have. IT has some singing shows, but the bulk of its programming is super stuff--series of cartoonists, how they work, series on rural issues, programme on health issues, educational material for children, lessons on morality and sensitive films.
Each time I click past DD National to Star, Zee, Sony, Sahara and what-have-you, I find someone or the other saying, Oh this contest means the world to me, I want to fulfil my mother's dream or I want to give my dog the best car in the world, and some sundry judges (often, has-beens such as Chunky Pandey, Raveena Tandon or Sonali Bendre and the nightmarishly omnipresent Malaika Arora-Khan).
Someone is praising a contestant or someone is fighting and someone else is crying copiously. Are these guys for real? Can't we have some real reality, people?
It's that time of the year again when we worry about a drought-like situation in Maharashtra, and probably many other parts of the country.
For a Mumbaiwalla, scarce rains means water cuts in the last four months of the year. For a farmer, it means debt and depression. He has spent all his expensive capital (at an interest rate of 30 to 40 %) on the seeds, and has sweated and toiled to sow them. Now he is waiting for the rains to do their job.
If it doesnt rain by July 31, the government will declare a drought in some areas. And when there are no rains, farmers despair and hope their region is declared a drought. Why? So that they can hope to get work on some EGS scheme (work for eight hours for a paltry 50-100 rupees or so) and they can put roti on the table.
Declaring a region drought-hit is not the end of his worries.
1. He may or may not get work on a scheme. It's not guaranteed.
2. The EGS schemes are run by a highly corrupt administration which makes up names of people on the rolls or, if it feels more adventurous, makes up an entire scheme itself. The farmers therefore may continue to starve while the official records show everybody has got work. In case an IAS officer decides to undo the wrong, she is transferred.
3. The money from EGS is erratic. A debt-ridden farmer may sign on a slip of paper saying he earns Rs 100 per day but he may get only Rs 50-60 in hand. The remainder is taken by those people for services granted
And, we are still not talking about what if the region is not declared drought-hit
And, we are still at the farmer's survival; we are still not talking about his heavy duty loan for the seeds which drives him to commit suicide.

Does the sickening Congress wheeling-dealing on July 22, or Rahul Gandhi's `brilliant' speech (how much are we going to fuss over him?), or even all those endless but mindless reality shows make any sense to you now?
Don't you think we have lost all sense of reality somewhere, that reality is not all about dancing and singing?

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

It's incredible how so many people are giving the clean chit to Manmohan Singh. "He is a good man," goes the refrain. But hello? Whom was all the horse-trading for? All the Rs 25 crore-50 crore getting wheeled into different corners of the world and all those heavy duty abstentions, cross-votings were intended to bail out this man who has somehow emerged dudh ka dhula even after sitting on this muck.
How can a person who allows someone to commit a murder be clean? Didnt Man know what was being done to save his disastrous government? Or are we saying we should go blindfolded when a murder is being committed in front of your eyes?
Why are we so daft?

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

So many people have been asking me why I quit mid-way. And a small number is also curious to know why I refused to take up a job for a while.
Let me begin at the beginning. And this is one record, off the record, whichever way you look at it because there is none other. I was fed up. I was fed up of what I and everybody else around me was dishing out in the name of journalism day after day. We were all glorified clerks, rushing for a story - please, please, any quote will do -- and dashing it off before the deadline.
We had this list of usual suspects we always spoke to for a quote. There were activists, doctors, lawyers, officials, politicians, even industrialists who were ever ready to give us a byte or quote. They made up the dial-a-quote diary. And believe me, they are all psychos, crazy to see their name in print.
Each one of us is guilty of making heroes and heroines out of them. Shabana Azmi is one. Shobha de is another. Pritish Nandy is the third. There are many more whom I dare not name for I too have used them often.
That's what eventually go to me. That I was writing worthless crap and the paper wanted me to write ONLY worthless crap.
Add to that a totally Worthless Person to coordinate work with and I threw my hands up.
Call it mid-career frustration. I didnt give it up all at once; I tried to set things right, complained that we need to get some quality into the paper. But then, no paper was talking about quality, so why us? Nobody was listening. All they said was relax, we will change things, we will change the WP, we will not let you leave. That was their bottomline. Mine was change everything.
As I had been ill the year before, I was already low on patience and felt like a break. I could have jumped from one frying pan into another, but didnt want to. AT ALL.
So, after months and months of hesitation at the idea of being without a job, I simply quit.
The sabbatical has been the best thing that ever happened to me. It did me a world of good, refreshed my spirits, nourished my soul, recharged my batteries and got me doing things I wanted to. All sorts of people came with all sorts of really flattering offers, and I picked what suited me. Now, I am not talking about those right here but basically, I realised there is a whole world out there which you havent explored.
So, if anyone out there thinks a job is the only way to live, get a life.

I seem to be making it a habit. And now, its positively embarrassing. So I shant apologise for the hopeless delay in writing to you this time. I would rather say thanks for bearing with me. Ya, believe me, I have been losing fans and friends because of my absolute inability to write here.

Now, cant afford that for too long. Guys, please come back. I promise to behave next time.

Am going to be politically incorrect this time. Too much bottled up within, you see.

Am seriously irritated with the way we urbanites decide we are superior to the rural or tribal people or even animals. Why? We speak English, right. We take bath, we have these big, neat houses, an 'education', we eat at a dining table, we go to the gym, know all about raindances, cardio and aerobics, sushi, spanish food, russian coffee, and what-have-you. Our kids go to IB schools or boarding. And, of course, we love dressing up like the west.

In some inexplicable way, that makes us superior to someone who gets his hands dirty toiling on the fields, doesnt get power to run his fan at home or water to nourish his field, lives off roti and onion or just roti on leaner days, cant afford to send his kid to the municipal school beyond 5 years because he needs an additional hand on the field, speaks a coarse dialect of an Indian language and spends a lifetime struggling to make two ends meet .

Heard two-three journos the other day talking (in clipped tones, why that is such a fad I cant fathom) about how Maharashtra chief minister Vilasrao Deshmukh insists on talking in English. Said one in a well-cultivated nasal twang that made her voice sharp and highly unappealing, "When I met him, I kept talking in Hindi and Marathi but he would insist on talking in englisss. He knows ours is an engliss publication. And God, he simply cant speak a wordddd.. Uf."

Am equanimous about politicians but whenever I have spoken to this CM, he has happily spoken to me in Hindi and Marathi and when I have spoken in English (I have these spells of blanking out on Marathi), he's responded in that language in a completely legible way.

Considering the exposure of these almighty journos to politicians including the CM is even less than mine, it got me thinking about why they were doing this. It's the age-old problem of reverse chivalry. We have settled our thinking that east or west, English is the best. And anybody who doesnt know the language is doomed.

And God, am I glad I speak it! Imagine how I would have fared had my parents decided to send me to an Indian language school. I know very bright journos earning Rs 20,000 a month after 15 years in the field and not getting half the respect I get only because they went to a non-English school. Naseerudding Shah had once said the same thing about Om Puri: that Puri was a superior actor but not given his due because, well, he was not the suave, English-speaking Shah.

You are reading me today because I am speaking from a position of strength as we see it. Had I studied in Gujarati and timidly complained about discrimination, I wouldnt have got half a ear.

Believe me, it gives me no pleasure to be better-off than them on this count. I think it's terrible the way a country of one billion plus simply sinks its head in the sand, not just with no self-respect but also with lots of shame at being what it is. And what is it that brings this hopeless identity crisis on? I have no idea.

Try speaking to someone in the first class compartment in Hindi and she will give you an offended or a withering look. It's happened with me. When someone speaks in Hindi, I end up answering in English if I think it's an educated person. Years and layers of conditioning that will probably never come off.

We can, however, do something. We can try to be conscious of it each time we run someone down simply because he can't speak English. We can also try to see that we speak an Indian language when we speak to a stranger outside our professional circles, if possible. It's ok if your English gets a little forgotten in a process. Better than to forget a history thats millions of years old. And your own identity.

Who knows, we could actually get some sense of self-pride back along the way, and learn that we arent really too bad after all.

Can sense that pent-up anger rising. So, let me calm my nerves while u take a commercial break. I will be right back.