Sep

30

10 ways to ask Amitabh Bachchan for money…

September 30, 2008 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

Amidst the chaos of the bomb blasts and the terrorist threats, there is sometime that incredible news that just takes all the stress away and makes you shake your head in disbelief. Last Thursday, that incredibly comical albeit somewhat scary thing happened to India’s biggest idol, Amitabh Bachchan, when he got a text message from an unknown person, demanding Rs 25 Crores. The message (”…Maare jaoge, tumhare pas sirf teen din hain, agar jeena chahte ho to 25 crore de do, nahi to…”), asking Mr. Bachchan to pay up the money or else face dire consequences, was found to be sent by a look-alike of none other than Abhishek Bachchan. The police quickly traced the message to the look-alike Raj Purohit, who had acted as Abhishek Bachchan’s double in the new movie ‘Drona’. Needless to say, Purohit was nabbed and all is well.

Purohit proved to be a dumb idiot and got himself behind bars. He could have simply asked Mr. Bachchan for some help and might have gotten it. Amitabh Bachchan has helped a lot of up-and-coming youngsters, and has proved to be a kind human being on several occasions. The least Raj Purohit could have done is get Mr. Bachchan’s attention by a comic text message like this:

1. Dad…this is Abhishek..the person living in your house right now is a look-alike, an impostor..can you wire the real me Rs 25 Crores at …….

2. This is Raj speaking…Send me Rs 25 Crores…you know where…

3. Dad….Salman is in trouble again….this black buck owner is asking for 25 Crore green bucks….

4. Jai, this is Gabbar Singh…if you want to save Ramgarh, send me Rs 25 Crore from Thakur’s old safe…

5. Amitji…Patil here….I got those new suits tailored from your tailor-master..but he has sent me this huge bill…

6. Dad..Abhishek again…it will cost us Rs 25 Crores to buy all tickets for the first weekend…

7. Anthony Gonsalves, Amar here…..Can you lend me some chump change….normally I wouldn’t ask, but I ended up giving a lot it away in that confidence vote last month….

8. Dad..Abhishek again…dad please…Selva Mani, Bhagat and Rashid won’t let go of me unless they get Rs 25 Crores…

9. Mr. Bachchan, this is Income Tax department..you owe the government Rs 25 Crores from your income last year..can you just wire it to…

10. Bhakt Amitabh…this is Balaji…yes…soham, Venkateswara,…son, send me 25 Crores…I will make sure all your dreams come true….

Sep

29

Ram Mohan Roy - remembered and restored

September 29, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

raja ram mohan roy tomb at Arnos ValeThis past weekend, Indians in UK paid a tribute to one of the first Indian residents in the UK, reformer, educationist, and Sati-abolitionist Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833). On the 175th death anniversary of Ram Mohan Roy, his tomb in the Arnos Vale cemetery was restored at the hands of the Indian high commissioner in the UK.

The tomb, a originally built by Roy’s colleague and businessman Dwarkanath Tagore in 1843. When Roy died in Bristol in 1833, he was at first buried in Stapleton, but ten years later, his body was transferred to the canopied mausoleum in Arnos Vale.

ram mohan roy tomb inscription

Incidentally, Arnos Vale cemetery is also home to the grave of Mary Carpenter (1807-1877), the English reformer and educationist, who visited India during the late 1860s & early 1870ss, founding Bengal’s first Hindu women’s school. She had hosted Ram Mohan Roy in his last year, and her father Lant Carpenter, the minister of Unitarian church, had preached the funeral sermon for Ram Mohan Roy.

The restoration of Roy’s tomb at this particular juncture bears a special significance. India has recently seen signs of Hindu-Christian discord. Ram Mohan Roy was probably one of the first Indians who tried to bridge the religious divide between Hindus and Christians. His writings on the Vedantic philosophy and the Upanishads appeared in the Unitarian monthly and he himself published critical reviews on Unitarian christianity in Kolkata. Almost 2 centuries ago, this wise man preached and prayed for religions to be incapable of differences and dislike between man and man, and capable of peace and union of mankind. Now that his tomb is restored, some of his thoughts and prayers will hopefully see the same fate.

Sep

29

Cool Hand Manmohan

September 29, 2008 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

“….What we’ve got here, is … failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach. So you get what we had here last week. Which is the way he wants it. Well, he gets it. And I don’t like it any more than you men….”
- Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke

The extraordinary meeting that took place last Thursday between the Indian prime minister and the American president was extraordinary not because of the importance the Americans attached to it. It wasn’t extraordinary for being Mr. Singh’s last supper with Mr. Bush, either. It was extraordinary for the way the two gentlemen complimented each other, something that hasn’t always been a norm between the heads of the two greatest democracies.

Mr. Singh complimented Mr. Bush for the latter’s efforts in bringing the two democracies closer than ever before. Mr. Bush complimented Mr. Singh on India’s vibrant and energetic disposition, and he also thanked for the calm and the serenity that Mr. Singh brought to the white house on day when the Americans were in the midst of the greatest financial crisis in the modern era.

Most Indians have personally experienced Mr. Singh’s calm and serenity through their television sets. Amidst what manifests as vibrancy and energy to foreigners and is experienced as chaos and noise by Indians, Singh is indeed the king of cool, seldom raising his voice, even when he is speaking to the entire nation or when trying to make an unmakable point in the halls of the parliament.

Just when the Americans are having their worst financial crisis in the recent times, India itself is having its worst internal security crisis in the recent times. Speaks volumes for Mr. Singh’s calm and serenity of which there is a plentiful supply that seems to outlast the worst crises of the two greatest nations.

On September 26th, the day after Bush and Singh had their dinner at the white house, and the day when Man Mohan Singh was born 75 years ago, there was news from Connecticut that famous actor Paul Newman, a Hollywood humanitarian, had died. I have watched one of his films more than a few times, the ‘67 classic Cool Hand Luke in which Newman plays a nonconformist prisoner who keeps fighting the system, coolly bluffing his way at the prison poker tables, but finally succumbing to the system.

Man Mohan Singh is a man who seems to be bluffing his way coolly through the political minefields of New Delhi politics, a man who is an oddity for an Indian politician, an awful public speaker as the leader of the land of public speaking. And although he hasn’t been a non-conformist to some, he has been exactly that and a reformist to many others. Will his cool outlast the current internal security crisis in the country, or will he succumb to the same-old-politics that many already believe he has absorbed well?

As the system and the cops catch up with Newman’s prison character Cool Hand Luke’s, he says those famous lines, “…What we’ve got here, is … failure to communicate….”. Having bridged the communication lines across the ocean, Cool Hand Manmohan needs to sprinkle some of his serenity here at home, to calm the religious fervor emanating from all quarters and religions.

Sep

28

As the police in Vijaywada stopped the traffic to allow the chief minister’s entourage to pass, a seriously ill 6-year old boy lay unconscious inside the ambulance, his father begging the police officers to allow that one ambulance to pass. After a long time, the Andhra chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy’s convoy did finally pass. The police made hand signals to allow everyone to pass. But after having waited for almost an hour, the ambulance was in no hurry to pass. It had no reason to. Giri Lakshmi Narayana, the seriously ill 6-year old had died, thanks to the state government, the state law enforcement and the local police whose sense of civic responsibility or the lack of it rather.

To add insult to the boy’s death, the local police refused to register a complaint by the boy’s father. “….the boy died of a medical problem…”, contended the police.

Would be easy to dismiss this as just another tragic incident that was beyond anyone’s control. But I wonder where the law stands on this one. So who is responsible for a death caused by or attributable to a situation where a political dignitary is being escorted at jet speeds? Assuming the chief minister’s car wouldn;t have pased for another 10 minutes, would it have been okay for the police officers to have allowed the ambulance to go through? It would have been justifiable insubordination at the least.

If nobody can be held liable for the boy’s death, what allows the government any right to tell the rest of the boy’s classmates that the law of the land, the law that cared zilch for their friend, should be respected? Who is to blame if any of those classmates then grows up to be a separatist or a terrorist or a naxalite? And who is to blame if that grown-up terrorist is then coddled by and is offered legal support by the same government machinery when his case comes up for trial?

Sep

28

I do scare

September 28, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

A few months ago, I wrote about the ghost story that almost closed one of India’s most prestigious higher education schools. Now, another higher education university, Punjab University, is facing ghostly threats from a floating bogeyman flying high on the fifth floor of the University dormitory.

The girls living in the dormitory woke the security guards up with their commotion at around 3 am. The guard took two more helpers and searched the premises for the ghost but came away empty-handed, leaving the mystery unsolved and the ghost legend intact. Naval Kishore, the dean of Student Welfare Association told the media that his team had looked into the mater, but nothing ’substantial’ was found so far.

The dormitory girls were however not ready to believe that there wasn’t anything substantive. In fact, they firmly believed that there really was something scary going on and that they hadn’t been able to sleep for days.

I have no doubt that there really is something scary going on. I just don’t think it is the ghosts however. What is scary is an intellectually bankrupt and culturally empty educational system that has produced science students at the university level who cannot put the matters of the mind to rest using rationalization or coherent thought processes. But wait. Why are we stuck with the floating ghosts on the fifth floor inside the Punjab university premises? What about all those other floating ghosts from the past, those spirits of the entities past that still keep hounding the rest of us? What about the floating ghosts of irrational beliefs? Of hurtful traditions that divide? Of separatist madness and of radical violence?

There are scarier things going on all around. The scariest thing for me is when I see the faces of our politicians on TV. Nothing scares me more than seeing the faces of the politicians who hold the keys to our vote banks and listening to the words that come out of their systems. Nothing is scarier than a bunch of politicians with a bit of power.

Sep

27

Did this couple kill Soumya and Vikram?

September 27, 2008 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

Have the police caught Soumya and Vikram’s killers? Events that unfolded at Spanish Lake, Soumya’s murder scene yesterday, could well give the police a clue about who may really be responsible for Soumya and Vikram’s untimely death.

Yesterday, 2 weeks after Tummala Soumya Reddy and Vikram Reddy were shot to death by unknown assailants, a similar incident unfolded when the police were notified of a shooting in Spanish lake, where the assailants had tried to escape in the victim’s car.

The police spotted the stolen vehicle only a mile away from the Spanish Lake and chased it on US highway 270, catching up with the suspects near Troy, only a mile away from Edwardsville, Illinois the place where Soumya studied.

another spanish lake incident

It is not known if the suspects arrested yesterday have any connection with Soumya and Vikram’s murders. Still, this nay be the break the police have been looking for, and these may very well be the same suspects who tried to pull of a similar crime 2 weeks ago, murdering the Indian cousins.

Related posts:
Tummala Soumya Reddy (1985-2008)
Who killed Soumya?

Sep

27

What was Zardari thinking?

September 27, 2008 posted by indiatime | 7 Comments

This week in New York, Pakistan’s newly elected president Zardari met with US vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. What happened during their first formal meeting has now become a moment of embarrassment for the Pakistani president. As he shook hands with the young good-looking Sarah Palin, Zardari made a pass at her, first praising her about how gorgeous she looked and later offering to hug her as well.

“…You are more gorgeous than you are on TV,” said a drooling Zardari to Palin, adding “…Now I know why the whole of America is crazy about you…”. To many those comments would sound very sexist and strange for a diplomatic exchange. But when the two were asked to pose for the cameras again, Zardari joked that he might even hug her if the press insisted on it.

What a contrast to the statesman-like and erudite Indian prime minister. One thing Man Mohan Singh will never be accused of hitting on a white woman.

Although the Zardari-Palin meeting was a short one at that, sources close to Zardari let indiatime in on how the conversation would have gone on, had the meeting continued longer. So here’s part of that Zardari-Palin meeting that didn’t happen.

Zardari: Mrs. Palin, I was really looking forward to this meeting. I was up at 5 this morning. Couldn’t even sleep last night.

Palin: Oh, Mr President, that is so flatterin.

Zardari: Actually Mrs. Palin, I was wondering how to begin our conversation. But then I thought that Alaskan women must be great at breaking ice (laughs).

Palin: Oh Mr President, that is so flatterin. Are you talkin abowt lots of ice breakin in Alaska. I don’t know if that global warmin thing is true.

Zardari: Oh believe me Sarah, umm may I call you Sarah? Believe me that global warming is happening. With women like you around, no wonder there is so much global warming…oh..what’s that wonderful smell? What perfume are you wearing?

Palin: Oh Mr President, that is so flatterin. It is moose musk from Alaska.

Zardari: (hums) ….Tu cheez badi hai musk musk…

….continued…

Sep

27

I just finished watching the first of the three US presidential debates. Out of the three scheduled debates, this first one focused on two things - foreign policy and national security. During the 90-minute debate moderated by public television host Jim Lehrer, and participated in by democratic party’s Barack Obama and republican party’s John McCain, not one mentioned India even once. Although India was the only nation that didn’t come on the debate radar, other so-called superpowers did. Russia did. China did. Britain and France and even Spain was lucky enough to get a mention. Pakistan did, because it is a big national security concern for the US. On foreign policy front however, the largest democracy in the world was completely forgotten, telling me that in the big scheme of things, India still does not have the clout, the respect, the stature and the standing as do China and Russia and Britain and France.

Here in India, for the whole of last week, the media has focused on the nuclear deal between the two great democracies. India’s prime minister even met with US president Bush yesterday and got his warm handshake and encouraging assurances. But that meeting was completely ignored by the media in the US which has been blanketed by the historic financial crisis on the wall street, a crisis that threatens US financial markets.

India’s ruling party almost lost its power over this nuclear deal agreement, almost destabilizing prime minister Singh. The other signatory of the deal is the US president, who himself has lost much of his power and standing even amongst his own party, most of whom see him as a departing lame duck president who has a few more weeks of power remaining.

So, I watched in great anticipation, expecting one of the two potential American presidents to announce to the rest of the world that India figures as an important ally in their foreign policy, a stable democracy which is also an economic giant and one of the biggest and one of the most vibrant markets on the planet. No luck.

There is an old saying that squeaky wheel gets the grease. But India doesn’t squeak. India doesn’t shout. India doesn’t grump and India doesn’t grouch. India doesn’t raise its voice. India is a good friend, a good neighbor, a good citizen of the world. Even when India is hurt, even when India is insulted, and even when India is sleighted, India doesn’t complain.

Folks, I am deeply upset. I am upset with Obama and McCain, the two leaders who tonight contended to know all there was to know about world matters. For sixty years since India’s independence, Americans have entirely and miserable missed the Indian connection. Makes me wonder if many still think we are the same Indians who were driven out of America to begin with. How ignorant and how short-sighted that vision has been!

I will however give some credit to Obama for having mentioned that he will go in and take out terrorists inside Pakistan, if the Pakistani government doesn’t do that on their own. I also know however, that had any Indian leader made the same comment or taken the same stance, India would have figured in tonight’s presidential debates.

We are a strange nation. As individuals, we will cut lines, bully the person standing next to us, behave in all kinds of un-civil ways, throw discipline out the door. As a nation, we want to be the model kid that the teacher praises and pins the badge of discipline to.

Soon, Obama or McCain, one of the these two nominees, will hold the mantle of the leader of the free world. For last several years, that free world has been threatened and held hostage by the radical faction of a few religious fanatics. India, just as the US, Britain, Spain and some other countries, has been a target of these radical factions, and over a long period, has had more terrorist attacks against it than any other country on the planet. Seems to me that the only way India can claim a little more leadership and a little more respect in the group of nations, is by showing how effectively and how quickly we root out the terrorism threat. Obama is a great orator and McCain is a great debator. Man Mohan Singh can show them and to the rest of the world that action, and that too of the quicker kind, speaks louder than words.

Sep

26

Reality bites from Kolkata

September 26, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

Swastika Mukherjee, a leading Bengali actress hailed by some as the hope of Bengal’s film industry is in trouble for having unleashed her dog at the court employee who had tried to serve a summons (subpoena). Yesterday, a Kolkata court fined the actress a sum of Rs 8500 (about $200) for her dog’s mischief.

Swastika has been embroiled in a court case with her husband and his family, and had previously testified to the court that she had never received any summons/subpoena and no court employee had ever come to her house. When the court investigated why its summons was never served to the actress, the court employee told the court that her ferocious dog had scared him away.

Chunilal Sardar, the court employee in question, is safe and sound as he managed to save his behind and never looked back as he ran far far away from the barking actress and her dog.

Uma Sain, however, wasn’t as lucky as Chunilal Sardar. Although she wasn’t bit by any dog, her body was gnawed away by rodents at the Kolkata morgue.

When her relatives showd up at the morgue to pick her body up after the post-mortem, they found several pieces of her body missing. “…When Uma’s body was taken (for post-mortem) inside the morgue on Tuesday, everything was fine….”, rued a family friend.

“…The morgue is looked after by the forensic department, I have no role to play in this….”, said medical superintendent L K Ghosh, denying any role in the biting incident.

Sep

25

Kartoos -1

September 25, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

kartoos cartoon

Sep

25

Why is the government funding terrorist defense?

September 25, 2008 posted by indiatime | 9 Comments

After admitting that 3 of its students have been nabbed by the Indian police on suspicions of being members of Indian Mujahiddeen, The Jamia Milia University, an autonomous albeit government-funded institution, has reiterated that it will pay for the defense of those accused in the Delhi bomb blasts.

I wonder what’s going on here. Last month, some members of the central cabinet come out supporting the terrorist organization SIMI. Now, after the police have exposed the terrorist cell or module that has been active in multiple terrorist attacks across the nation, this government-funded university feels that it must support the students accused of being murderous terrorists. And in spite of all this coddling going on and around, there is a universal feeling in the minority communities that they are being persecuted. Who’s telling the truth?

The university and its academicians maintain that the police and the investigative agencies, have historically, botched investigations, and have been shown to catch or target wrong suspects. That is not entirely untrue. So even if that argument is assumed to be valid, for a public university to take a political stand in a case involving alleged terror masterminds accused of killing hundreds of innocent civilians from all religions, is, I think, a little disingenuous, hypocritical and plain wrong.

I’m sure there are dozens of other non-profit organizations and agencies that will surely come forward to ensure that the accused criminals get adequate defense. But what’s a university doing on this front? What is the primary purpose this university has been getting funding from the government? How can the university disburse its funds for such activities? Why can it not award a few more scholarships to those who need them for real education?

This is setting such a dangerous precedent. Imagine every publicly funded educational institute starting to divert their funds for criminal defenses of students or faculty who may or may not be guilty in whatever cases they are accused of. That would lead to criminals enrolling in academic institutes en masse, knowing that any criminal activity they perpetrate will be supported, funded and defended by the educational institutes via its government-funded kitty. And what if a case drags for years or decades? Imagine a university locking itself into supporting criminal defenses for someone for 10 or 20 years.

Let me ask this question. If the accused criminals are found guilty, can the university faculty then be prosecuted for having aided and abetted terrorists? If the accused are indeed found to have murdered hundreds of innocent Indians, can those cabinet ministers who aided and abetted and supported those organizations be prosecuted for treason? If the accused terrorists are indeed found to be those who spilt innocent blood for their own radical ideologies, can the university that supported them, then be shut down for good? If the answer to all those questions is a resounding yes, then go ahead and do whatever.

It’s one thing for the justice system to provide legal counsel and defense for those who cannot afford it. It’s entirely another thing for educational institutes, public funded or otherwise, to indulge in this kind of political posturing. Nobody disputes the need for more diligence, better judgement, more transparency and better oversight from investigative agencies. But if institutions of higher learning start behaving like madrassas, then this nation will be doomed as never before.

Sep

24

Stripped and paraded naked in India

September 24, 2008 posted by indiatime | 14 Comments

A woman president, a former woman prime minister, women as state governors or chief ministers, women at the top spots in police, bureaucracy, judiciary, industries. But the state of women in a country must not be measured by the status of its most successful womenfolk. To see how we treat women, one must turn one’s attention to those women who are at the very bottom of our social system, those in the remote corners, those left off unprotected by the system, those left fending for themselves.

Today, a court in Maharashtra sentenced six men to death by hanging, for their role in brutal murders of a family of four. That family of four included two women, a mother and a daughter, both insulted, raped and paraded naked in public before being murdered brutally. But the court was way too kind and lenient towards the murderers. It did not sentence them to naked parades in public. It did not humiliate them. It did not beat them up with lashes. And it did not poke their genitals with sticks and rods.

A little bit of research shows that parading women naked in public is a sport not too infrequently practised in this free country. Here are a few recent examples:

1. September 2006, Maharashtra
Surekha and Priyanka Bhotmange, mother and daughter from Khairlanji were stripped and paraded naked in public by a mob of 20 men, angry at the women for having given testimony in a previous case. The mob later assaulted and murdered both.

2. January 2006, Punjab
Darsho, a woman from Jalandhar was stripped and paraded naked by her neighbors with whom she had had an altercation about constructing a fence between the properties.

3. April 2008, Jharkhand
Kalawati, a widow from Ranwatand village, was stripped and paraded naked for having visited the temple of Kali and putting a red dot on her forehead. Before the parade, the town people put a garland of shoes around her neck.

4. March 2006, Maharashtra
A 30-year old woman from Chausala village was stripped, beaten and paraded naked in public.

5. September 2005, Orissa
Six women from Bhubanpati village were stripped and paraded naked, because their husbands refused to wash the feet of a bridegroom and his guests.

6. September 2002, Uttar Pradesh
A woman from Pratapgarh, was stripped and paraded naked by the police and the town tehsildar, angry at her having lodged a complaint in a land dispute case.

7. June 2006, Madhya Pradesh
Indira Kushwaha, herself head of the Mahoikala villagewas stripped and paraded naked, when she refused to fund some of the government allotted money to a local family.

8. June 2006, Madhya Pradesh
Shyama Tomar, head of a local village council was stripped in public when she shut off illegal water connection to a hotel facility.

9. September 2008, Bihar
Bharati Devi, of Kishanganj village, was stripped and paraded naked in public for not giving up her claim on a piece of land. The local police chief has told the press that the woman’s story is ‘bullshit and concocted’. He admitted however, that she had been ‘physically tortured and tormented’.

10. December 2006, Bihar
Besra Devi, a 55-year old woman from Balua Basant village, was stripped and paraded naked as a punishment for having stolen a few bananas.

11. July 2001, Karnataka
Yerramma of Vanenur village, was stripped and paraded naked by a local mob, over suspicions of having helped a local teenager elope with another boy.

12. May 2005, Bihar
Nirmala Devi, 40, of Purnia village, was stripped, beaten and paraded naked for having refused to continue doing household chores for her employer.

13. January 2008, Andhra Pradesh
Hemli, 28, of Jalli Tanda village, was stripped and paraded naked by a mob of 200 who later threw chilli powder on her naked body. The mob suspected her of having killed her husband with the help of her lover.

I can go on and cite a dozen more of these just from recent years. The perpetrators of Khairlanji got death sentences only because they murdered the women after the insults and the torture. I bet most of the perpetrators in most of those other cases got away scot-free.

Sep

24

India’s first senior citizens blind date convention

September 24, 2008 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

There were two elderly people living in a senior citizens’ home. He was a widower, she a widow. They had known one another for a number of years. One evening there was a community supper downstairs, and the two sat at the same table, across from one another. He gathered some courage and asked her, “Will you marry me?”

A few minutes later she answered. “Yes. Yes, I will.”

The meal ended and, with a few more pleasant exchanges, they went to their respective rooms. Next morning, he was troubled. “Did she say ‘yes’ or did she say ‘no’?” He couldn’t remember. So he picked up his telephone and called her, “I forget things easily noaways and I don’t remember as well as I used to. Last night when I asked if you would marry me, did you say ‘Yes’ or did you say ‘No’?”

“Why, I said, ‘Yes, yes I will’ and I did mean it dear”, she continued, “I am so glad that you called, because I couldn’t remember who had asked me.”

Cheerful news is hard to come by these days, and that’s why I want to highlight this particular one. VMAS (Vina Moolya Amoolya Seva - Priceless Precious Service, literally), a non-profit in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, is arranging India’s first marriage-convention, for seniors. India’s first senior blind date convention will take place on October 12th in Ahmedabad. For women participants, the registration comes with a gift of a railways fare, free local transportation, and complementary lunch.

VMAS, a marriage bureau that offers free services to those above 50, has so far garnered 600 male registrations and about 60 female registrations. Most of the male registrants are widowers or divorcees. Several female registrants, however are first-timers.

Most of those women first-timers have led selfless lives, sacrificing their years for their families, younger brothers or sisters, elder parents or relatives, working to get others educated, staying home to support the elderly and the sick within the families. Now, with those responsibilities borne out, and at a juncture where their own lonely lives could afford the warmth and comfort of a companionship, these seniors have come forward, albeit shyly, to seek what they have missed so far.

More than a hundred years ago, in 1893, Dhindo Keshav Karve founded India’s first marriage bureau for widows. That institution became an ashram, a shelter for those Indian women who were outcast by society, and after a century of service to the Indian women, turned into India’s first women’s university - SNDT.

Just the other day, I wrote about the rising divorce rates amongst India’s newly married. Something tells me that the seniors gathering in Ahmedabad on October 12th, are not giving a hoot about that statistics. At a time when the elders in India are having to look ahead to lonelier lives away from their sons and daughters and in an era where the number of joint families is declining at a rapid pace, anything that brings happiness to our seniors is a heartening news. It surely lights up a romantic candle or two, giving hope to those who need it most, making their days and evenings a lot less bluer and a lot, lot brighter.

Sep

23

Yesterday around noon, about 200 ex-employees of the Italian auto parts company Graziano Transmissioni, went berserk, barged into the company premises, and clubbed CEO Lalit Kishore Chaudhury to death. The incident happened in Noida, a capital suburb, in broad daylight.

Most of the rampaging workers, fired barely a few weeks ago, entered the premises around noon, began attacking the company vehicles and its property, prompting CEO Lalit Kishore to come outside to calm the angry mob. As the 44-year old chief executive reasoned with his irate ex-workers, the mob began manhandling him, and someone bludgeoned his head with a hammer.

After Graziano’s partial lockout a couple months ago, negotiations were apparently under way to rehire some of the fired employees under modified contract terms. A dispute over those terms led to the company requesting the courts to keep the ex-employees away from the company gates.

As the crazed employees disregarded the court orders entering the company premises, the police was nowhere to protect the company property and its working staff. The company staff has further alleged that only two low-cader constables showed up in the first hour after the CEO was murdered.

A recent study by Stanford school of business suggests that perceptions of unequal and unfair treatment can have powerful and pernicious effects for organization. Those feelings of injustice and unfairness can prompt employee turnovers or slowdown in work, the study found. Seems that the Stanford study limited itself to the civilized world.

The despicable and uncivilized display of unjustifiable and indefensible cruelty in Noida is an ugly reminder that human beings are worse than animals when they lose their human tendencies. There is no place for such raw emotions in a civilized society, no matter the legitimacy of the arguments or complaints that fan such flames. This also is terrorism just as last week’s bomb blasts were.

And where was India’s esteemed labor minister when the last act of this labor dispute was being played out inside Graziano’s premises? Ironically, while the Graziano CEO was being bludgeoned, Oscar Fernandes - India’s minister for Labor relations, was busy inaugurating the third Indo-EU seminar on Employment Relations and Resolution of Conflicts, only a few minutes away from the Noida murder scene. And thus the minister demagogued - “….the relationship between the employer and the employee is based on mutual adjustment of interests and goals-of course involving economic, social, psychological and political factors….”!

Sep

22

A temple of boom for Ambanis

September 22, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

Indiana Jones has come back to India, this time in search of the temple of boom. Steven Spielberg, the most celebrated movie director of all times, is joining hands with Anil Ambani of Reliance Big Entertainment, the handshake that will cost Anil Ambani a whopping half billion dollars. For Spielberg’s company Dreamworks, the Reliance deal buys freedom from Paramount, making Dreamworks an independent entity. For Ambani, the deal buys the best director on the planet alongwith some of the best movie-making expertise on the planet.

Seems all is well for the big brother Mukesh as well. Yesterday morning, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd, announced country’s biggest breakthrough on energy security, with oil beginning to flow from its D6 well in the Krishna Godavari basin. The D6 well will begin producing more than half a million barrels of oil per day in about a couple of years, providing for cooking gas for a 100 million households, 50 million two-wheelers, 5 million cars and 10 million trucks.

With one arm reaching for the stars and the other reaching the depths of the ocean, the Ambanis are about to become a force that is going to make the current Reliance group look like modest beginnings. Father Ambani is surely smiling in the stars.

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