Oct

31

The fools that we are and the fools that we will be

October 31, 2008 posted by indiatime | 3 Comments

Seems the government awake about the crisis in Maharashtra. It is now being reported that the prime minister has supposedly conveyed the sense of the cabinet to the Maharashtra government. I think that must have sent chills down the spine or the lack of it of Maharashtra’s ruling elite.

New Delhi is now said to have expressed serious concerns and is also said to have conveyed its sympathies with the families of those who have lost their lives. Those ‘timely’ acts have lately been the hallmark of New Delhi. Which is precisely what has emboldened the spirits of the radical few who dream to make their mark by exploiting divisions of various kinds. When I say ‘radical few’, I am not speaking of the terrorists or naxalites or the separatists or the fundamentalists. Their position is already unambiguously clear and everyone knows where they stand. But I speak of those few who wear the clothes that politicians do and speak the lingo that politicians do.

That the whole provincialism argument is a bogus one, bears no repeating. Most local politicians have tried this vote bank tactic with all non-native speaking communities. InMumbai’s current scenario, it is the Biharis. But Gujaratis have been there and so have been the Madrasis and the Punjabis and the Kannadigas and the Bengalis. In fact, so have been here the Marathis as well. It is almost always a fallacy to blindly believe that the preachers of provincialism really believe in what they preach. It is almost safe to assume, however, that it is the politics that drives them and not the ideological fervor that is seemingly apparent to the masses.

Having said that, the so-called supporters of Biharis, the leaders from the North, have now found a new vote bank weapon, and they are only too delighted to have it. I almost get a feeling that they have already called and thanked Mumbai’s regional leaders, grateful for this politicking opportunity. In fact, for all we know and see on the face of it, that is precisely what happens in the life of politicians. Never bothering once why their people have been leaving their cities and state for decades, these leaders now have an argument to make, a new premise for vote-gathering, a new tactic for the next election.

The editor of a famous newspaper once told me of how he had hosted two opposing party leaders at his home, a secret dinner of sorts over some bottles of wine. The two couldn’t meet in public, he told me, because the public perceived them as being at each other’s throats. In the privacy of his living room, he told me, the two chatted and frolicked as two fast buddies. Then in the wee hours of the morning, they each left separately, and within a few hours, the same newspaper reported about some of the stinging criticism the two had leveled at each other at political rallies the day before.

We, the public, are usually taken to be gullible fools by those who walk in the political corridors. And that they do so is a testament to our foolishness and our stupidity. The news that New Delhi finally seems to take notice of the growing political heat in Maharashtra is a message not to the political brass in Maharashtra. It is a message to those amongst us who have wondered if New Delhi is awake or not. And now that New Delhi has done its part, we won’t hear of anything else unless things demand another dose of political poppy-talk.

Public discontent is a powerful weapon in a politician’s arsenal. Politicians on either side work with that same weapon, those on this side to quell it just enough, and those on that side to fuel it just enough. Soon, we the public will be at one another’s throats yet again, playing to their political tunes. And they, sipping wines, will once again be laughing at the fools that we are and the fools that we will be. All of us. The Maharashtrians, the Biharis, the Gujaratis, the Madrasis, the Kannadigas, the Telugus, the Punjabis, the Singhis, the Bengalis, the Kashmiris, all of us.

Oct

30

Homi Bhabha (Oct 30, 1909 - Jan 24, 1966)

October 30, 2008 posted by indiatime | 6 Comments

October 30th is the beginning of the birth centenary of a great son of India, Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha (October 30, 1909 - January 24, 1966). What makes this remembrance even more special this year, is the progress India has made in the two fields of which Homi Bhabha must be considered a pioneer of - nuclear physics and space research.

Bhabha studied under Paul Dirac, the Novel-winning British physicist, and completed his doctorate under Ralph Fowler, a famous physicist and the son-in-law of Rutherford who is considered to be the father of nuclear Physics. In a matter of 2 decades, he founded three of India’s foremost scientific institutes - TIFR (Tata Institute of Fundamental Research) in 1945, Atomic Energy Commission in 1948, and Indian National Committee of Space Research (parent organization of today’s ISRO) in 1962.

As a student in the 1930s, Bhabha worked with Enrico Fermi, the man who later became famous for his work on the world’s first nuclear reactor. Within years after that, Bhabha himself had set up India’s Atomic Energy Commission. Although India’s first nuclear explosion came much later in 1974, Homi Bhabha had been making invaluable contributions to that program for almost 25 years before that explosion.

After the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, there was a truce meeting set up in Tashkent, USSR. The leader of India’s mission, Prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri died under mysterious circumstances (official reports list the cause of his death as a heart attack) on Janoary 11th, a day after Shastri signed the Tashkent declaration. Exactly 2 weeks later, on January the 24th, Homi Bhabha was one of the passengers on Air India flight 101, traveling from Mumbai to London via New Dehi and Beirut. On its Beirut to London leg, the plane crashed into Mont Blanc, killing 120 people inside, including Homi Bhabha.

There have been speculations about why within a matter of two weeks, our prime minister and our foremost atomic scientist died, both under mysterious circumstances. One of the theories is that after China’s 1964 nuclear device explosion, India felt the need to arm itself with a nuclear device, especially in light of the 1962 Sino-Indian war. The nuclear China was a close ally to Pakistan in the war of 1965, and India’s top brass may have had some discussions on India’s own nuclear device. But someone within the Indian cabinet of that time, someone with ulterior motives, most probably financial, might have disclosed India’s secrets to our enemies who in some way planned to eliminate two of our best men in two weeks.

It would be another 6 years when, during the visit to the Atomic Energy Establishment in Mumbai, (which by then was renamed as Bhabha Atomic Research Center), another prime minister gave the verbal authorization and the go-ahead for India’s first nuclear explosion. The rest, as they say is history.

Oct

29

Convicted Czech scientist flees India

October 29, 2008 posted by indiatime | 36 Comments

“…Since I felt that Darjeeling authorities are not able to guarantee my right for a fair trial, I decided to solve this complicated situation by leaving. I am now back on Czech soil…”
- Emil Kučera, Czech scientist convicted of illegally collecting rare insects in India

Emil Kučera, a Czech entomologist who was recently sentenced to 3 years imprisonment by an Indian court, has fled to Czech Republic. Kučera and his colleague Svacha were found collecting rare insects from a protected area near Darjeeling. The Indian authorities claimed that the Czech duo had gathered almost 500 insects in a few days, and moreover, had done so without applying for any permit from the wildlife or biodiversity authorities in India. That incident had triggered an arrest of both the Czech scientists back in June. Of the two, Svacha was released, but Kučera was sentenced to 3-years in an Indian jail for violation of India’s Biological Diversity act of 2002.

Although he was represented by an Indian lawyer, Kučera has questioned the fairness of his trial, calling the Indian courts corrupt, and claiming that his lawyer T. K. Pandit, had been conspiring with the judge and the prosecution.

Almost a year ago, I wrote about Saul Itzhayek, a Candian national, who was tricked by the Indian police at the Indo-Nepal border, and was thrown in an Indian jail. Unlike Itzhayek, Kučera’s case is a little more complicated, since he was found with rare insect species, an illegal act that does carry a rather harsh sentence (upto 5 years) typically reserved for poachers and rare species smugglers. Indian authorities suspected Kučera of carrying an insect trade, a charge that may or may not have been correct, but one that Kučera may have brought upon himself when he was found with an excessively large number of rare insect species in his possession.

But Indian authorities made a mistake when they tried to make an example out of Kučera, by throwing the rulebook at him and sending him to the slammer. I’m not saying the authorities were wrong. I’m just saying they were naive. Why? Because the authorities should have known that the same Indian law that allowed them to throw the Czech scientist in jail for 3 years, would also allowed him to be free on bail. They should have known that by virtue of arresting a foreign national, his embassy would be involved and would try their best to assist his case. And they should have known that where there are some who would go by the book to prosecute a suspected insect-thief, there are others who would help him escape for financial incentives.

In fairness to Mr. Kučera, it must be mentioned that he must have found himself in the strangest dilemma. It would have been easy for him to plead guilty, pay the fine, and get the heck out of India. Instead, he found himself hounded and persecuted by a seemingly corrupt system for a seemingly benign act. That he perceived the system to be corrupt is completely understandable. Any Indian citizen would wholeheartedly concur with him on that front. He could and probably should have tried staying and fighting with that corrupt system.

In 1970, American student Bill Hayes was arrested, tried and jailed in Turkey for drug-related offenses. Five years later, Hayes escaped the Turkish prison and eventually wrote a book that turned into a popular Hollywood movie Midnight Express, loosely based on his escape.

Kučera may have feared and probably did have nightmares about languishing in an Indian jail. So he chose to escape when it was easiest. Even though his passport had been confiscated, he was able to make a run for it, with the help of a large circle of friends and surely with the blessings of the Czech embassy staff in India. And I wouldn’t blame him for trying that. I’m sure it was the Indian court system that had taught him ad made him aware of the alternatives and options available in this country when one is confronted by the strong arm of the law. And the same instincts he used to capture the escaping insects probably also taught him to run for his life before becoming a captive. But Indian authorities can take heart. For a few months at least, the Indians made Kučera and his colleague feel what those rare insects must have felt being captured.

Oct

28

Bus 332

October 28, 2008 posted by indiatime | 14 Comments

Almost 8 years ago, a young Brazilian man hijacked a bus in the city of Rio De Janeiro, holding the passengers inside hostage for several hours, eventually getting killed by the local police. That incident came to life on silver screen in the famous and award-winning Brazilian movie named Bus 174.

Yesterday, Rahul Raj, a youngster who had come to Mumbai from Bihar just a day before, hijacked a double-decker bus in a Mumbai suburb, threatened to harm a regional party leader Raj Thackeray, and eventually was killed by the police bullets.

There is now a huge outcry about this youngster’s death at the hands of Mumbai police, and a widespread condemnation from the northeastern parts of India, especially from Rahul Raj’s state of Bihar. Several questions remain unanswered at this point, and any premature conclusions will definitely not serve the greater interest of justice.

It has been reported that Rahul Raj boarded Bus 332 yesterday morning around 9 am. When the bus conductor asked him for a ticket, Rahul apparently did not respond the way other passengers usually do. The conductor has alleged that Rahul tried to starngle him with a steel chain, and then asked for a cellphone so he could call the police commissioner and Raj Thackeray, the chief of MNS, Maharashtra’s regional party (which is an offshoot of Shiv Sena).

An agitated Rahul Raj then asked to stop the bus, and then shot a passenger named Manoj Bhagat in the leg. Within minutes, Mumbai police surrounded the bus, the other passengers got out, and the police started negotiating with Rahul Raj, ordering him to surrender. Rahul is then said to have dropped a 10-Rupee bill and a 50-Rupee bill after writing a message on each, asking to talk to the police commissioner and to Raj Thackeray.

During the negotiations with the police, Rahul appeared increasingly agitated, scared and in panic, waving his gun at the police as he spoke from inside the bus. As he waved his gun at the police, bullets were fired at him from the police guns, one aimed right at his head. His head dropped as the bullet hit him hard, and then bus 332 went quiet.

A young man from Bihar travels to Mumbai, apparently looking for a job, manages to possess a gun, waves the gun at bystanders and the police, managing to injure an innocent bystander in the process, and gets killed by the police. Mumbai has seen a lot of bizarre things, but this incident ranks right at the top for its strangeness, suddenness, and the violent way it ended.

Within the next few days and weeks, we will find out what sparked Rahul Raj’s extraordinary rage and what motivated a reportedly soft-spoken youngster to take an extreme step, taking him to the brink of some deep-seated psychosis, putting his whole life on the line for a burst of indignation.

Nobody will doubt that the police has not come out shining in this episode, I don’t think there was enough time for a conspiracy to hatch since the time Rahul Raj started on his path. The fact that Rahul Raj was carrying and waving his gun, and had already shot some other bystander, was enough of a trigger to make police antsy about his intentions. But, a better trained police force would have been much smarter and would have used tear gas or rubber bullets to disable and neutralize any threat from the angry youngster. For some reason known only to the people who ordered the shooting, something apparently necessitated that Rahul Raj be killed immediately. Whether that was because he was perceived as a grave threat to the general public, or whether the police knew some more details about the young man that we still don’t, all those things will soon be clearer.

Was Rahul Raj an innocent victim of some bigger police or state conspiracy? Or was he a hired gun, an assassin who came to town with an intent to harm the leader of MNS? If he were really a hired gun, why did he ask to talk to the police and why did he want to talk to the MNS chief? What was his motive in hijacking a bus? Or did he have some urgent message for the police commissioner or for Mr. Thackeray? What was it that he wanted to convey to the police? And why did the police commissioner not talk to him on phone? Too many questions as yet another bizarre day begins for Mumbai.

Oct

27

10 ways for India to help Pakistan in time of need

October 27, 2008 posted by indiatime | 11 Comments

Time magazine is reporting that the US national intelligence estimate (NIE) report is bleak beyond belief. That report is saying that Pakistan has ‘no money. no energy, no government’, with inflation running rampant, the currency having lost a third of its value, and foreign currency reserves reduced to the point that they can finance no more than six weeks of imports. Pakistan is trying to raise funds to somehow stay afloat, with President Zardari practically begging other nations to bail his country out.

In these days of crisis, India can certainly do a lot to help its neighbor out. Pakistan wouldn’t mind us putting a few simple conditions on that IOU, and here’s how both sides can make it a win-win situation.

1. Pakistan currently spends about one quarter of its national budget on its military. Most of that military expenditure is in place to fight against arch enemy India. If Pakistan dismantles its army, it can put that wasteful 25% national budget to better use keeping its economy afloat. Countries The arms race with India has cost Pakistan a lot of money, and the best way would be to put a stop to that. What good is the military if there’s no nation to defend anyways? In return of Pakistan’s dismantling the army on the border, India can put an assurance in writing that Indian army will not cross the border into Pakistan.

2. But Pakistan needs a lot more money that what the release of its defense budget would provide for. The next thing to do would be for India to make an offer for some real estate that both countries have been fighting for, over the last few decades. How about India buys the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK) for a sum of say, a billion dollars or something? India has already spent a lot of money fighting in that region. So any money invested to buy that land would be money saved in defense spending for India. Also, Such transactions are not entirely unheard of in world history. In 1867, United States bought the territory of Alaska from financially strapped Russians for a sum of $7.2 millions. In 1803, US bought Louisiana from the French for $11 millions.

3. Pakistan may soon be hosting the pipeline that runs through its land, bringing gas to India from Iran. Indians would be happy to pay a few extra dollars to be able to secure that pipeline, as a means of protecting the Indian investment. There is nothing in this deal that Pakistan will disagree about since it only ensures common mutual interests of both the countries.

4. One of the things Pakistan direly needs is excellent centers of higher education. India’s human resource minister has already made a decision on expanding the extent of India’s top institutions like IITs and IIMs. It would take only a little extra effort to open additional IITs and IIMs in Pakistan, ensuring an enviable future for Pakistan’s next generation.

5. Pakistan currently hosts India’s most wanted person, the man who has eluded Indian police for almost 20 years now. As part of the bigger deal, Pakistan can hand him over to India and collect on the bounty that the Indian police have on his head.

6. For an additional sum of money, Pakistan can give India the names of its terror operatives who have been working various sleeper cells in Indian cities. This way, Pakistan stands to make all the reward money India has put on finding those terrorists.

7. There is a lot of expenditure Pakistan has been investing in to secure its atomic facilities. Pretty soon, those atomic facilities will be falling into the terrorist hands if that nation goes to dogs as the American intelligence estimate is suggesting. Why not let India take control of those facilities for an additional sum that can be used for some greater public good in Pakistan?

8. A lot Pakistani money is spent buying Indian goods in gray market - things such as Bollywood DVDs, electronics items, software etc? By opening up to Indian goods, Pakistani government can make some additional money in legitimate taxes and customs duties. Bollywood financiers can even lend a helping hand to Lollywood, a relationship that can utilize the Pakistan’s undeniable musical talent that has had to provide for itself through appearances on India’s reality shows.

9. Most American banks and government departments host their software back-ends in India. Pakistan can save some more money by outsourcing its backend databases to the Indian software companies, thus freeing its own resources on social betterment and democratic reforms.

10. India’s billionaires have had some issues getting discount-priced land for manufacturing. By giving Tatas and Ambanis some free land, Pakistan can shore up its job market, spurring a wave of industrial growth. The Tata cars could be coming out of some factory in Waziristan, and Ambanis could be drilling for natural gas south of Karachi. It would be a huge payout for either parties, with the Pakistani public coming out ahead by virtue of substantial additional money in its pocket.

Decades ago, Mahatma Gandhi insisted on India splitting billions worth of hard cash with its new neighbor. It’s not a bad proposition all these years later, if Pakistan were to retreat on some of the contentious issues between the two neighbors. In return, Pakistan gets to stay on the world map. It’s a good deal for Pakistan.

Oct

26

The smokescreen of greater public good

October 26, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

India’s health ministry has come out with some concessions for Bollywood’s filmamkers who, now, will be able to show smoking on the screen as long as the person doing the smoking is a historic or an iconic figure, known to be a smoker (the health ministry officials have said that Bollywood can still show a Churchill or a Sherlock Holmes smoking and the ministry wouldn’t object to that).

So far, my view of this health ministry was that they may be a little extra zealous with some of this stuff, but it was all for a good cause. Even when the health minister requested Bollywood celebrities to stop smoking in public, I kind of agreed with that premise, since it is true that the young and the restless do get somewhat influenced by the film celebrities. But I am a bit worried now, with some of this overreaching of sorts by the government, where it is trying to tell filmmakers what to show and how to show it.

When the government starts telling the artists or writers what to do and what not, it is basically acting against the constitution that has allowed everyone the freedom to say things. By claiming that certain things said in a certain way are more harmful to the greater public good, and should therefore be banned, the government now starts playing on a sticky wicket, especially where it gets into restricting artistic licenses.

Only a few months ago, commenting on the MF Hussain painting controversy, India’s highest court blasted the moral police who protested artistic expressions of nudity and eroticism, and ruling that obscenity lies in the eyes of the beholder. Now, if MF Hussain or any other famous artist for that matter, makes a painting of a smoking person, would that be out of bounds as well? It would be difficult to say that one art medium sways people more than the other, or that it is o.k. to draw a smoking person but not show the moving visuals on a silver screen.

The ban on smoking could then be extended to most other bad things shown in the movies. Soon, the bad guys will be banned devoiding movies of any drama in the stories (except when Bollywood is depicting bad guys from history). Half-clothed hip-swinging women will be next, eliminating the female characters from Indian movies, since that’s the only thing Indian heroines do in our movies (but dancers from history will be allowed, so any courtesans from kings’ harems, will be allowed). Double-meaning songs and dialogs will be next, eliminating half the content from Bollywood movies.

The best way to handle this problem would be to open a new unit in the health and the culture ministries, employing government-owned public servants who can write clean sterile and healthy storylines. For a few years, the government should just take a sabbatical from its regular activities and focus on creating a clean culture for a cleaner India. Our neighbor China has been doing just that for decades, telling people what to see, what to think, what to eat and what to s**t. Even better, the government can just nationalize Bollywood, assuming total control of everything that comes out of it. Nothing screws up anything like the government’s midas touch. After a free 100-year unrestricted reign of expression, Bollywood deserves to be a government department - a department of movies or something.

Oct

25

Footpath woes

October 25, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

The Right to Walk Foundation in Hyderabad is demanding that the government provide the citizens with a space to walk on the streets. The demand got hotter over a recent death of an 18-year old pedestrian who died walking along the streetside as there wasn’t a sidewalk or a footpath available.

The pedestrian death may arguably be a much smaller issue confronting the country where every day some new act of terrorism gets perpetrated by some new fringe group representing some fringe ideology. But pedestrian deaths account for 65% road deaths in developing countries, with almost 35% of those pedestrians being children.

That we speak of avoidable roadside deaths due to inadequate walking space in the same week where we speak of a rising superpower’s groundbreaking space mission, tells us that India’s government hasn’t always gotten its priorities right. And although the roads and streets everywhere appear as if some construction is always going on year-round, one hardly gets the sense that we in India, have learnt how to build good streets with decent sidewalks.

One of my memories from the school days is that of the footpath artists who used the path for their artistic expressions, mostly colored chalk-drawings of deities, and making chump change by the end of the day. Walking to the school during the final examination days, the chalk drawings of those deities were a great morale-booster for those like me who didn’t take the examinations seriously enough. Years later, I came across similar artistic expressions in other parts of the world as well, though the subjects changed from religious deities to those more humorous and more fun just as in these pictures.

footpath-21.jpg

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Oct

24

Rahul Gandhi to groom millions of Obamas in India

October 24, 2008 posted by indiatime | 2 Comments

Rahul Gandhi has been observing the US presidential election rather keenly, more so than most politics junkies in India. For last several months, Rahul Gandhi is said to be aligning his social and political message to that of Obama’s, basing his strategies on the success of the US presidential hopeful’s historic campaign. In his speeches and on his tours, Rahul Gandhi has tried to emulate some of Obama’s strategies and tactics, prompting many of his followers to hope for a boost to his overall political standing in India.

Just the day before, Rahul Gandhi spoke of India’s millions of Obamas and how he is trying to channelize their energy, giving them voice and power. That’s a similar promise his great grandfather and his grandmother once made to the great grandfathers and to the grandmothers and grandfathers of those Obamas. In fairness to Rahul, he may have the luck and the ability to pull that promise off, and that’s fine.

The problem with Rahul’s Obamania is that his past puts him closer to a Bush or a McCain than an Obama. Beyond having a white mother and a non-white father, there may not be many similarities between these two individuals. Well, there is one thing that binds Obama and Gandhi together and that is they both were at Harvard during the same period in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

But Obama started his political life at the grassroots, building his connections as a community organizer. Gandhi, on the other hand, entered at the top, thanks to a family legacy going back almost 4 generations where three successive generations of his family had served in the highest political office in the land. That puts Rahul closer to the current president Bush whose father was a president, grandfather was a senator and great grandfather was an industrialist. The family connections also put Rahul closer to McCain whose father was a 4-star navy admiral, grandfather was a navy admiral and great grandfather was a plantation owner. So the case that Rahul Gandhi wants to make to the commoners is much harder and much tougher, coming from where he does and wanting to go where he wants to.

But before grooming anyone else, Rahul may want to groom a little bit of himself, especially his oratorial skills, where the opposition parties have conventionally had a huge advantage against the ruling Congress party. What propelled an unknown Obama into the political magnetosphere was his gift of the gab. If Rahul Gandhi can learn some oratorial skills and use the disarming smile that his supporters believe he already has in his repertoire, he can then afford the audacity of dreaming and hoping to become a 4th generation leader to his party.

Oct

23

Earlier this year, Sam Lal, of New York hurt his back lifting a heavy load at his work. The intractable back pain turned into a headache he thought he would probably be dealing with for some time to come. But then, a miracle happened to him. Or at least he seems to think so.

amaranth-shaped-as-ganesh - courtesy NY Daily NewsThis summer, a purple-red blossom of flowers in his yard started growing into the shape of an elephant trunk. To Sam Lal, the purplish-red Amaranth flowers seemed like incarnations of Lord Ganesh, and in fact, the flowers took the shape of an elephant trunk, almost looking like an idol of Ganesh, the elephant-headed remover of obstacles for millions of devout Hindus around the world.

Close to Lal’s home in Queen’s New York is the Queens botanical garden, and the experts and horticulturists from the garden came in and examined Lal’s red flowers. Amaranth, they opined, does not usually take the shape as it did in Lal’s yard.

Amaranth plant is usually considered as weed, but Amaranth grains are quite familiar to most Indians as ‘Rajgira’ , ‘Rajeera’, or ‘Ramdana’. mostly used to make laddoos (sweet-balls), especially during religious festivities. Rajgira is known to be very rich in proteins, dietary fiber, and dietary minerals.

Actually, Amaranth is known to be a bushy plant that grows 5 to 7 feet, with broad leaves and a showy flower head of small, red or magenta, clover like flowers which are profuse, and constitute the plants exquisite, feathery plumes. To the faithful eyes of Sam Lal however, the showy flower head looked like his Lord Ganesh. And however one may try to rationalize the shape, it is hard to argue that Lal’s Amaranth plant does look like his Lord.

But as Khalil Gibran once said, “Faith is a knowledge within the heart, beyond the reach of proof”. Sam Lal has had his proof, since his intractable back pain suddenly stopped the day the Ganesh-shaped flowers blossomed at his doorstep. For this non-resident Indian living in New York suburbs, those flowers were a celestial sign, a nod from his maker, a blessing from the remover of obstacles, and an affectionate recognition of his deep faith in his Lord.

Oct

22

1. India’s feminists blasted the government and the press for calling the lunar mission an unmanned mission - “…Why call this an unmanned mission when it is also an unwomanned mission? In fact, aren’t two of three most famous Indian astronauts women? Or is it because ‘men are from mars’? Then when we fly a mission to venus, can we at least then call it unwomanned mission?…”

2. India’s communist leaders reiterated their position that the lunar mission was a hoax. “..Wait till they start flashing pictures of moon on TV. Those moon pictures will look a lot like Ramnagar village in Sholay…”, one CPI leader blurted. Some senior CPI leaders accused the government of executing the moon launch to help the economic crisis in the United States.

3. Mamta Banerjee is upset that the Govt of India has already granted a major portion of lunar land to Tata. She is also asking the government to clarify why Tatas alone have been given permission to build lunar landrovers.

4. Congratulating India’s scientists, Karunanidhi, Tamilnadu’s chief minister, told the media that the moon mission will finally destroy the myth of Hindu mythology. “I have been telling our people that Hindu Gods did not exist”, he said, “this moon mission is a clear sign that there is no such thing as God Chandra“.

5. Sena leaders in Mumbai were livid when someone mentioned about India’s date with the moon. ‘Amchi Moonbai’, they shouted.

6. Human resources minister Arjun Singh congratulated the Indian Space Research Organization and announced that the government soon planned to open 20 additional space research organizations all around India. “There is a lot of space”, he said.

7. Health minister Ramadoss is proposing a ban on public smoking on the moon. Speaking to the reporters in the capital, he expressed his concern, telling them that ’smoking while mooning can be hazardous and injurious to health’.

8. Also speaking to the press in the capital, Sheila Dixit, New Delhi’s chief minister expressed her dismay at the early morning launch of the lunar mission. Traveling in space so early in the morning can be unsafe, she pointed out, adding that space is already known to be unsafe and there was no need to be this adventurous.

9. When asked to comment on India’s first lunar launch, home minister Shivraj Patil said, “Whoever has done this, they are enemies of humanity and enemies of India….They want to destroy peace in our society. . . . We will take the toughest action against them…..Tuesday’s blast was very big. …we will have to see who is behind this”

10. “What’s next for India after Chandrayaan-1″, the foreign press asked India’s president. “Two”, she said with her trademark hand gesture.

Oct

21

The real telecom breakthrough

October 21, 2008 posted by indiatime | Leave a Comment

There is some enlightening news today about India’s incredible progress in the field of telecommunications and satellite technology. No, I’m not talking about the moon mission that has already begun its countdown.

I am talking about the Sabarmati prison, a jailhouse that houses some of this nation’s most dangerous criminals. Those criminals include murderers, rapists, terrorists, agents of Pakistan’s ISI, and others with impressive criminal portfolios. It is now official that 1 in 7 inmates of the Sabarmati prison, has a cellphone. Among the 4000 inhabitants of this cesspool of humanity, there is an astonishingly large population of 600 modern cellphones, able to communicate nationally as well as internationally.

The free availability of cellphones amongst the inmates has dramatically reduced the family visitations, as the families are now able to keep in touch with their loved ones (and our hated ones) on a 24×7 basis.

Recently, the police had noted that there were a large number of calls placed from inside of the Sabarmati prison to destinations outside India, immediately after the Ahmedabad bomb blasts. That fact together with another known fact that several terrorists have been housed inside this prison, leads one to believe that the jailed terrorists have been making calls outside India, sometimes celebrating the latest acts of terrorism, taking directions and further instructions from their masterminds at other times.

The inmates recently showed that their ingenuity knew no bounds. Just the other day, some inmates were found to have been successfully running a liquor bar inside the prison. Queried about how they were able to use cellphones in spite of the jamming equipment at the prison office, the inmates revealed that they would first call the jailor on his cellphone, and if that connected, they knew that that the jammers were disabled.

The planners of India’s moon mission have been bragging that the moon shot is a unique feat achieved by professional aeronautic engineers at the top of their game. It seems that the task could have been outsourced to the genius minds inside the Sabarmati prison. Had they been running the show, the moon mission would have been a manned mission carrying many of those inmates to the moon.

Oct

20

Turning an honest cop’s martyrdom into a tamasha

October 20, 2008 posted by indiatime | 4 Comments

Famed author Arundhati Roy is daring India’s middle class to question the recent terrorist encounter in New Delhi. “…Thousands of people are saying a lot of things….I am just one of the thousands of people who are asking some very serious questions from the police…”, said Roy, speaking to the press. Roy further castigated the middle class for shunning liberal values, and asked for a probe into the matter.

I wonder what motivates people who otherwise have high intellectual caliber to be sucked in the communal argument, where the people who perpetrate radical acts are looked at with compassion & kindness and the victims who suffer get blamed for not being liberal enough. I have never seen such twisted logic and such ridiculous arguments being made where the case for such arguments was weak at best, the connections to reality tenuous if any at all.

Still, I am never one who would argue against further probes and additional inquiry into something that was seemingly a suspicious story. In fact, I am astonished that the government has dragged its feet on this one, lending unnecessary credibility to the arguments of those like Ms. Roy. It is better to burst such balloons at their earliest before rumors build into anecdotes that are nurtured and maintained warm in the political oven by opportunist politicians and their pawns, in this case, Ms. Roy.

Where are these humanitarians when bombs explode one after another, in metro after metro, killing Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs and Christians? Why do they keep quiet when radical elements from various religions take threatening postures against individuals, groups or businesses? Why do such intellectuals validate and dignify the political nitwits whose only goal is to stir up controversies and further fuel communal sentiments in the hope of solifying vote banks?

What makes Ms. Roy’s point so ridiculous is her targeting the middle class, themselves the victims of not just terrorism, but also of the dirty political games played by those who revel and prosper by keeping India’s citizenry divided into groups. It is utterly foolish to expect 99.99999 % of Indians to be compassionate and understanding and caring of the 0.00001 % radical zealots who want to destroy the way the rest of us live.

To be fair to Ms. Roy, I would encourage her to modulate her argument by asking the middle class - all of them, to speak up against the radical elements in their own religion. That would mean middle class Hindus speaking up against Bajrang Dal and Sena and MNS, middle class Muslims speaking up against Mujahiddeens and Jihadist, middle-class Christians speaking up against forced conversions if and where they occur, etc. Most of this country’s citizens, no matter what religion they practise, are indeed liberal moderates who are happy to let their neighbors do their own thing. It is the radical few from each religion who seem to terrorize their own, claiming high pedestals and fake morals, exploiting religions to build financial and political empires.

A top cop got killed in those Delhi encounters and for anyone to say that the police sacrificed one of their own to manufacture an encounter story, is an unfortunate distraction from the real story of Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma’s courage and his dedication to this country. Yeah, yeah, set up an investigation and get a probe or a commission and what not and get this over with. And then, Ms. Roy, if it turns out that the encounter was real, I hope you will show the decency to apologise to the Sharma family and to the hundreds who died in those bomb blasts.

Oct

19

This weekend makes the debut of Karzzz, a reincarnation of the late 70s Bollywood classic Karz, itself reincarnated from a not-so-classic Hollywood original The Reincarnation of Peter Proud. Although reincarnation is a recurrent theme in Hindu philosophy, Bollywood ended copying from an American original. The makers of the current version of this reincarnation drama are said to have brought the supposed copyrights to the original story from Subhash Ghai, the Indian filmmaker who actually had stolen his story from the Hollywood original, never giving the original writer Max Ehrlich any credit anywhere.

But American classics and flops have a way of reincarnating as Indian classics and flops and that itself is a neverending story that has been told a hundred times before. Today, October the 19th, is remembered by history as a day when, back in 1781, Charles Cornwallis, a British general, surrendered to the forces of American revolutionary George Washington, in Yorktown, Virginia. Cornwallis then returned to England, a defeated and a dejected soldier.

Five years later, General Cornwallis found himself on a ship to India, now reincarnated as the governor-general and the commander-in-chief of British forces in India. From 1786 to 1792, this new life did Cornwallis a lot of good, with the cliamx coming when he defeated the Tipu Sultan of Mysore in 1792, opening the southern India for the British, paving the way for an almost across-the-board colonization of India by the British.

Cornwallis returned to England in 1792, but came back 13 in October of 1805, once again appointed as India’s governor-general. This time around, his stay would be pretty short. Immediately upon his arrival in the then Calcutta, he traveled to Ghazipur, near Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Within days, he died there, close to the holy city of Varanasi, where Hindu souls are said to leave their bodies, re-entering the re-incarnation drama of life.

When Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington’s forces on October the 19th 1781, his British drummers played the march, “The World Turned Upside Down”, an old English ballad that lamented the good old times thus:

“…Yet let’s be content, and the times lament, you see the world turn’d upside down….”

or as Bollywood would have it,

“….Ek hasina thi, ek diwana tha, kya umar, kya sama, kya zamana tha…..”

Oct

18

The dowry gazette - October 2008

October 18, 2008 posted by indiatime | 6 Comments

To get a sense of atrocities in the name of bridal gifts, it helps to see how widespread and how rampant this problem is in India. Here are some recent reports from the dowryland.

Samiksha (31), a New Delhi housewife set herself ablaze when her husband and in-laws demanded money from her family. Samiksha’s father has alleged that she was in fact, murdered by her husband’s family whom he had recently given Rs. 8 lakhs.

Geeta Gupta of Nagpur was set ablaze by her husband’s sisters. As she lay on her deathbed, 95% of her body burnt from the assault, she told the police what had happened. Once the cops left, her husband’s family assaulted her again for having told on them.

Days ago, Sakera Belim of Surat jumped into the Tapi river, tired of the dowry demands from her husband. Sakera’s husband had recently divorced her, apparently ending her misery. But he recently asked her to remarry him, an act which would necessitated her marrying someone else for a day.

Kalinidi Mishra, a housewife from Kandivli, Mumbai, jumped into a well and ended her life, tired of her husband demanding a motorbike from her family.

Renu, from Meerut, was hospitalized after her husband and his uncle lashed her, tied her legs and branded her with a hot knife.

Anurani (23) of Permabur was hospitalized with severe head injuries after her husband repeatedly banged her head against the wall, for not agreeing to his dowry demands.

Sangeeta Thakur, a pregnant housewife from New Delhi, was found dead and stuffed into a bed box. Her husband Sanjay has been absconding. Even before the murder, her family had been alleging torture and dowry demands from her husband’s family, and had also sought the help from the women’s commission.

Saruchi Sharma of Vadodara, managed to escape her husband’s house and told the police that her husband and in-laws had been gagging, tying and beating her beating her up with an iron rod almost on a daily basis.

As married women all over India celebrated the Karva Chauth on a cool night, violence against women remained a hot tissue in India and several other parts of the world as well. Today’s New York Times is reporting on the epidemic or rapes in the country of Congo, where a rape victim recently described her ordeal to an international commission, teling them how she became the ‘dinner’ for the hungry rapists. India was not far behind, the most startling cases coming from India’s new tourist mecca on the western coast, Goa, where the home minister’s son was absolved of rape and murder charges within a day of police investigation and the rape charges against education minister’s son were deferred by the state police.

Oct

17

Palin vs Patil - a comparative study

October 17, 2008 posted by indiatime | 1 Comment

Sarah Palin, the vice-residential nominee of the republican party in the the US is trying to reach a goal that Pratibha Patil of India has already reached. The two women come from two corners of the planet, Palin from Alaska and Patil from Maharashtra. But there is a surprisingly large number of things they have in common. Here is my humble attempt to bring those coincidences to your attention:-

palin patil
 
current governor of the
northwestern state of Alaska, USA		 former governor of the
northwestern Rajasthan, India
 
first female governor of Alaska, USA first female governor of Rajasthan, India
 
currently nominee for Vice-President of USA currently President of India
 
captain of basketball team in school captain of table-tennis team in college
 
winner of local beauty pageant was voted ‘college queen’ of MJ College, Jalgaon
 
Is a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Communication-Journalism Is a Bachelor of Law (LLB), and a Master of Arts (MA) in Political Science
 
has been accused of firing her brother-in-law has been accused of shielding her brother from a criminal investigation
 
her husband has been accused of interfering with an official investigation her husband has been accused of contributing to a teacher’s accidental death
 
Is an avid hunter married into a family originally from a place called ‘Sikar’ meaning hunting in Hindi
 
Her nomination for the vice-presidential spot caused controversy prompting many to question her qualifications Her nomination for the presidential spot caused controversy prompting many to question her qualifications
 
Has never uttered the word ‘Rajasthan’ or ‘Maharashtra’. Has surely uttered the word ‘Alaska’ several times. In her language, Alas Ka means ‘did you come’?
 

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