INDIA SHAMED, BUT NOT ASHAMED

Well, it's not about choppers anymore. Chopper Deal just got promoted to ARMSGATE, It's all about INDIA. ITALY, SWITZERLAND are investigating which  ITALIAN & SWISS agents paid kickbacks to INDIANS. However INDIA is doing nothing to find out which INDIANS received bribes! I can't bear anymore to learn how INDIA IS GETTING SHAMED IN FRONT OF THE ENTIRE WORLD! One has just got to log on to internet and check out the buzz in Wall Street, and the headlines in The Financial Times, The London Times as of today....

What do these facts mean to us? It means Indian citizens have systematically cheated. We have been meticulously cheated over the last decade of our tax money, our faith, our patriotism, our goodness, our emotions. The corrupt establishment has, in the name of governance, lied to us, misled us, and successfully sent us barking up the wrong tree. With corruption deeply entrenched in our governance, India's establishment has sent off its treachery to percolate through the maze of legislative and administrative mockery to greet us in lieu of our faith that we have put on it, for all the blood and sweat of citizens to keep our country running.

This entire system should be OVERTHROWN. Nothing, no democratic process can bring us justice because the sanctity of parliamentary democracy has long been breached, and it doesn't deserve to be trusted. The common Indian feels desolately hopeless and heart-broken. He has completely lost faith in the System. 

QUESTION FOR MAMATA BANERJEE

On 11.2.2013 at around 10:30  pm, I had posted this on my Facebook wall :

"Been there, done that.
Whipped there, Slapped that. Didi's losing it. Very soon she might be seen crawling on all fours...
Towards Sundarbans, stalking her prey - Democracy I mean...."

I didn't know that 12 hours later a cop would be shot dead in broad daylight  in Garden Reach, Kolkata!

I am dumbfounded : a *TV news clip shows me this guy in red jacket and denims rushing towards a small crowd, openly shooting the cop - TAPAS CHOWDHURY, SI SPECIAL BRANCH - at point blank and he drops dead, and scurrying off towards the right (his left) of the lens-view.

*Another clip shows the face of the bastard standing just behind 2-3 men sporting moronic smiles (they must be the local politicians, I'm dead sure).

I've grown up in Calcutta in the times of Left Front rule - I was 8 yrs old in 1977 - and have seen/heard/read about complete anarchy in episodes, some of them being utterly gruesome. But THIS happening in 2013 - I AM ASHAMED TO HAVE BEEN BORN & BROUGHT UP IN CALCUTTA/KOLKATA.

NOTHING HAS CHANGED IN CALCUTTA.
It is the CM herself who should be slapped or whipped.............

WHAT IS YOUR OPINION, MS MAMATA BANERJEE??

REPUBLIC DAY : A PLEDGE

It's 26th January once again. The Republic of India is 63 years old today. While the country has advanced in all forms of progress, a range of problems continue to plague our beloved country. And there is a list of issues that percolates through every stratum of its sectarian society, down to encroach upon the basic rights of an individual - The Right to Live, and The Right to Live with Dignity.

Violence against and sexual abuse of women, the 'unequal' society that the girl child finds herself in to face, female infanticide, foeticide, gender bias form a big chunk of the list. While there has been an increasing consciousness in our society about these issues, we still have a long, long way to go.    

Religious fundamentalism too continues to exist worldwide and its social ramifications encroach upon basic human rights - the Right to Live. While an Indian continues to hope that this will vanish too, we should be conscious of the fact that we ourselves form the society and all of us have a responsibility to address religious fundamentalism from within, the responsibility to care for our neighbour, or the unknown man in the streets. We just cannot afford anymore to look the other way.

Believing sincerely in a religion bestows upon man a responsibility which most of us do not realize or choose to keep silent on. Every religious person has to see that religion does not become an instrument to divide and kill where religion was 'devised' by the prehistoric man to sustain, survive and let live.

Religion is not an aberration. It is a norm of human society and it has always been so. But it is here I would like to stress upon an opinion (which I believe is a fact which even the deepest religious person cannot evade). We have witnessed genocides in the name of religion. Not to repeat oft-repeated emotions about 'the riots' India has witnessed and been a victim of time and again, and phases of militancy (that has become synonymous with terrorism) which again has, and is proving to be too expensive for India and her citizens. Religion has been historically used to justify waging heinous wars and performing unspeakable atrocities on fellow men. The sheer ferocity of religious fanaticism of holy wars rivals the worst crime man has ever committed.

Though religion, over the millenia, has been carried ahead to signify something totally different from what it was in prehistory, to assume predominant spaces of one's life to influence thought and action, the religious person Has to account for every crime that is committed in the name of his religion. While the Right to believe in religion should never be questioned or even opposed, it is by no means irrelevant to step in and point out when religion as a right encroaches upon a far more fundamental and significant right, the right to Live.

It is up to us to ponder upon and try to sustain an equilibrium between how one puts Faith in his/her religion, and how following religion affects our community outside the comfort of our own homes. 

I am sure all of us will continue to evolve a bit in consciousness and in conscience, and make India a violence-free country for our future generations to live in. 

MAN THE CARNIVORE

Man is the only animal who kills his prey for reasons other than survival or rather to procure food for survival, where other animals hunt to eat.

What an irony! Right from childhood, one's perception about carnivores is marked with deep impressions of graphic visualisation of a lion stalking its prey, straight out of the pictures of jungle adventure stories. We really do not see ourselves belonging to the realm of carnivores.

Why? Is a child's mind biased or wired to give one aspect of predation most of the space? 

I don't think so. It's how we are taught by adults who tell us tales of beasts stalking beasts in a particular way. We don't give the 'carnivorous' aspect much attention, predators sans the carnivorous element. Wild animals, chasing their prey, killing them ruthlessly - upto here a child's mind is over saturated, so he doesn't feel any urge to follow a hunt to the 't'. And that we learn as information alright but not in the proper balance. 

What if he thinks suddenly : "Was George Bush hungry whilegoing after Bin Laden?"
WOW hold it right there!
The perception of "danger" (relevant to killing, eating and living - in that order) is strangely constructed, - a denial of sorts. When a parent reads out a story to a young child, a story of hunters and jungles and of course, carnivores, we hate to think beyond that. Because at the end, while a lion is helping himself to a freshly hunted buck or deer, Man still stands, appetite satiated - yet he has a gun in his hand and a vicious mind, ready to hunt down a fellow human being.

To justify whenever man gives in to "Kill the Enemy" order, he has to be ruthless and cruel. But we justify genocide by fighting a war, where his country eggs him on to kill 'for honour', with medals and stripes and crosses. So he shoots a fellow human being carrying a flag of colours alien to him. Back from the battle-field, we rinse our minds off the traces of suppressed guilt and make war movies, where predators are heroes, taking part in genocide, so what if he speaks in an unknown tongue.

I wonder how we percieve, define, and express in our own personalised form, the concept of "Danger". Let's ask the first man we see tomorrow during the morning jog, "which species is the most dangerous?" . He will say anything but "Us".
One day perhaps we will learn the lesson. Someone from us only? And to him I say these words when I read in my private mind, something called "WAR APPEASED" : 

"The Hating Hearts shall weep before you,
The Gore and Bloodshed,
Each kill mocking you, 
Of Embodied Hatred.

A Child shall know --
A Dawn when Angels awaken,
In Silence, of Peace spoken,
To Embrace Forgiveness again,
As the widow and the orphan weep,
Your words shall softly sweep,
Cleansing the Bloodied Trail,
Loving rose-hearts blooming forever to prevail --
before you Hating Hearts shall bow.
Everything the Child shall see
Just like it was all meant to be. "