Trauma of parents...

...who are rich and famous! The Indian ghazal duo which made their mark with some of their most beautiful collection of ghazals. Jagjit Singh and Chitra Singh, whose mellifluous voices I grew up listening to.

Chitra Singh's daughter committed suicide, y'day, who was suffering from clinical depression over two failed marriages.

And that's not all!

Their son, Vivek Singh, died at a young age of 19, in a road accident, in 90s. That was the event, when Chitra Singh decided to quit singing over this humungous personal loss.

Nothing can fill this void in their life now, and no money or fame will help them get past this grief to lead a normal life, any time soon.

Kiya hai Pyar Jise...

Where would my grave be?

I better find out, answer to this question after I deride this peanut-size brained, self-proclaimed, fearless leader of Mumbai land which belongs to Marathi folks, only. As a side note, in middle of nowhere, in the post, I would like my grave to be in a place heavily populated by Maharashtrians spot in Mumbai or in front of Balasaheb's plush mansion. Apart from abundant laughable ridiculosity, there are many noteworthy remarks made in this proclamation by Balasahebji Thackeray.

Thackeray calls Singh and Nirupam a snake and a cobra respectively, and warns them for acting against the interests of Marathi people.

Thackeray continues: "Delhi always fear that Marathis will become rulers one day.

Sonia Gandhi said that Mumbai belongs to everyone. Who has given her the right to decide Mumbai's fate? In fact, she is an outsider to the country.

I call them masterpieces of wisdom meant for framing and putting them up as wall decors. You noticed the "ji" in there? What do I say, I have utmost respect for this clown clan who has worked really hard on divisive India. I wonder, if nation should get together to dig his and his son's grave first before tackling more constructive developmental work. It might just help speed up the process.

Ha!

Serendipity...

...in Singapore, of finding that getting caught unaware in rains still leaves a tickle, I still love getting drenched in rains. Realized, some simple pleasures never get buried too deep, no matter how jaded life gets! Simple pleasure will be simply found just like this oldie song. I love the way she cuts him off, every time, to say what she wants to say, nevertheless. Ahhh...!!

Tumse Mila Tha Pya...

The ugliness of the Indian male

I had first read on Hari's blog, a forthright confirmation about atypical habits which are typical to genre of Indian males. It was a nudge to my deeper observations which I had conveniently never made a fuss about, never mind if they had made me uncomfortable. And then, about a week back, on South Asian literature mailing list (which goes by SASIALIT) there was a furor over an article by same Mukul Kesavan, The Ugly Indian Man - Of hygiene, hair and horrible habits. Needless to say, there were some angry email exchange by Indian men and the rebel was quite evident. Rightfully and quite understandably so. Many of them were offended and there were voices of rebel to discontinue the discussion. One gentleman also said,

"As an Indian male I am deeply offended at this kind of hate-mongering.
Indianmaleophobia is what it is. Moderators, over here, if you please!"

Recently, I was on a flight to Singapore, 18-long hours flight which I had dreaded from the beginning. But Singapore airlines had me impressed right from the beginning with their hospitality, provision of comfort and attention to little details. I think, the food was a little excessive for me and I could barely eat one-fourth of what they provided but after a couple of times, I realized it would just be safer for me to decline rest of the meals and snacks, until I felt hungry again. However, after 12 hours of flight there was a stop for fueling at Incheon, a place I had never heard of before. But this 40 minutes pit-stop led to shuffling of passengers. After I returned, I had an Indian male neighbor for my remaining 6 hours leg. What the heck did I know, what a replacement this would turn out to be.

This person was probably in his late 30s or early 40s, slightly pudgy with salt and pepper hair. His casualness was noticeable. He had flung his shoes aside as soon as he had plonked in to seat, tore open the blanket plastic cover with a sense of immediacy and covered himself as he reclined casually stretching his legs under his front seat. He grabbed the remote device immediately and fiddled with it until he settled down for the movie of his choice. Quite understandable that utmost comfort can be critical on journeys like these.

Within few minutes into the movie, with remote in his one hand, this man was industriously digging into his nose, alternating between left and right nostrils. My red flag antenna was on high alert from then on. After all, I had written confirmations and self observations to back my aghast internal (so far) reaction. I knew that this hard work of index finger is a danger in my vicinity.

"When you think of where they put those nails, this is not surprising. I’ve seen respectable men conducting conversations with their index fingers two digits deep in their nostrils, digging with industrial enthusiasm. If you ever see a desi man delicately rubbing the tip of his index over the pad of his thumb, beware. Don’t do near him: he’s rolling the bogies he’s mined into little balls."

This called for my pretentious patient demeanor to react and soon. So I did! I gave him some serious angry looks but I should have known that the man is too comfortable and oblivious to his surroundings. I was suddenly very conscious of my lack of access to freedom in that belted seat. I was helpless and trepid of my confinement. I immediately mumbled, "this is disgusting"! I was gleeful that he heard. But he did not stop right away, his fingers would reach out to nose and then he would brush it off gently with his thumb and index finger and end it with a sniff. I did not give up and obviously could not sleep for rest of my journey. I calculated in my head that uncomfortable alert wakefulness is a safer proposition than oblivious sleep which can lead to infliction of dreadful habits of Indian male neighbor.

Hello from Singapore!

Mediocrity

How do we justify mediocrity? Process of learning, acceptable sub-standard way of thinking, rejection to first-handed way of subliminal possibilities and thinking, wholehearted acceptance to below average ways?

Can manipulation be labeled mediocre? Does explicitness of shameless mediocre actions qualify for better preparedness or implicit-but-can-be-spotted-mediocre actions qualify for sophisticated way to some esoteric elitism?

Mediocrity is a dangerous premise and I have seen it very closely in known and somewhat known faces. Close enough to know that it is mediocre thinking which has translated into mediocre actions. I have experienced this in professional environment, volunteer work (seemingly noblest intentions), personal life, friends and acquaintances. It's stealthy presence leaves me troubled, every time. People being comfortable with mediocrity makes me uncomfortable. It makes me nervous, so very nervous!

If, anytime, you hear somebody saying in callous demeanor, "but that is how it has been happening for a long time," watch out for degraded collective wisdom in calling to accept and refusal to think!

...

Jaage Hain.mp3

"aadhe adhoore khwaab jo,

poore na ho sake,

ikbar fir se neend mein,

woh khwaab hone do."

Beautiful song with beautiful lyrics! This is not to say, that, I have forgotten about my most(est) favorite gem. But this just fits my current mood just a little better.

Watch it...

...it's a bitchy rant!

I got super annoyed with this. I don't follow it but stumbled a few days back and couldn't resist making my point. If you wonder why, read the rest. I don't dislike things without a reason. Firstly, I have no idea why nowadays every possible celebrity wants to join this bandwagon of blogs. You really don't have to! It's not uncool if you don't have a blog. But it's uncool if you present garbage which is loud and desperate for attention. Quite like the way he always liked hogging all the attention, AB, and is his name. Didn't you get enough attention already Mr.B, from the nation which featured you in its poverty parade of recent times as well? I am referring to Slumdog Millionaire. If I were you, I would be ashamed than anything else of the fact that a kid did what he did in the movie for your picture. It's rather a sad symbolism of deprived existence and presented in layers of fantasies and promises, through the lens of Bollywood. But that's not your fault entirely.

Forget your acting skills for now, and let's just analyze your blog quality bit by bit, disaster by disaster, feature by feature. One, do you really think people need to look at your loud close-up picture first and be forced to scroll up & down to hunt for some meaningful content? Flicking your father's poem to decorate it on your blog is in cheap taste, imho, because such things can be done and should be on a personal website, no? Then comes the content part, do you really think its important to have an everyday log? who reads that kind of royal shit? As a mature adult, you can contribute meaningfully or just be quiet. It's about time you figured that its about quality and not about quantity. I quickly glanced through and couldn't figure out anything that made any sense. You hog everything that came your way, whether it was acting, singing, anchoring, clowning. There was no thinking time, sifting time given and it showed in everything you did.

Nation got tired of you but you haven't tired yourself of giving garbage to the nation. For the little good work we can talk about, here is what I have to say. If you worked on million things, chances of one, two or three being somewhat successful is highly likely.

Be good and Keep the promise of appreciating sanity!

Effective efforts

I had written this, below email (last year) to set of people, of my impression (as a woman) and categorization of various potential heinous things that women may face in their life.

Hi A,

Thanks for putting this together! You have captured the essential purpose of this conference session and intention with it was triggered to begin with. If you notice, there are just so many issues of varied seriousness, be it regular day to today life instances, to trivial matter like using guys instead of folks, or more grave issues of molestations to rape. And since the session did not come out with tangible concrete action items to go home with, it cannot be labeled as faulty. Issue by itself is so diverse and knotty that we do need to focus on problem by problem from accepting if its a problem first to if there are healing steps required. But with due respect to everyone's consciousness, we do need to focus first on absolutely necessary harmful issues which are beyond the "gotcha" aha moments.

One such discussion I had with V (during conference) on existence of prostitution business in our "society." When people say existence of flesh business is acceptable for safer societies for women. So essentially are we sacrificing few women for greater common good? Is that something they are doing willingly? Is it the money lure (blinding by not providing the choice of other alternatives)? If it is a healthy component to the society then why it is not a mainstream profession and why not advocated to every woman. My gut feeling is no woman will or doing this by choice. Its either force, trick or difficult financial circumstances. Hence, I do not agree with that argument at all. highest degree...


Next is molestation, rape where affected women are damaged beyond inexplicable impacts. Even though for a moment we accept that we make it socially acceptable and men are more open towards accepting the victims, but are they not scarred and battered at a deeper level? Almost all the stories that we heard in the email, there was one element very common, shame, guilt, deep hurt (even though none of them asked for it). None were rape experiences in those but any kind of physical intrusion left them seriously hurt. How did the guilt get formed to girl child of age as early as 7/8 years old. Is it instinct or? higher degree...

Next is cat-calling or eve-teasing etc..these are instances where women are affected at a more superficial level and their physical self is not intruded by strangers. I got talking to my American friends here about this issues and idea of eve-teasing is almost non-existent. It will be interesting to find why it is such a big crisis in India.Is it suppression of guys feelings, upbringing, lack of proper education, lack of co-eds, sex education? These might be bit easier to deal with. I know, I am making a big assumption here. Please chime in. Medium level...

Next is issues related to our everyday lives, why were women made to learn cooking and guys taught not to cry etc...list is long here. But having said this, these are deep rooted, well fed from childhood practices/biases etc. How harmful can they be or are? Once we assess that we can address those as they come. Low level...


Some of you may feel that one is more harmful than the other. Agreed. This is very subjective. I merely listed all these for convenience and since we cannot adopt the same approach to all the problems. But we need to identify the gravity of issue individually and tackle one at a time. I think we have been pretty successful in introducing the topic in general. Now we need to find our focus and work towards one problem at a time.

My 2 cents.
Pallavi

Today, morning I read about this.

According to the Justice Department, 1 in 3 Native American women will be raped in her lifetime. Tribal leaders say predators believe Native American land is almost a free-for-all, where no law enforcement can touch them.

It got me wondering if just tightening the federal efforts is the solution to eradicate this problem.

The federal government has recently announced plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to improve medical clinics, buy more rape kits and bolster the police response to what authorities say is an epidemic of rapes on Indian land.

I personally don't think so! It will empower women and grant access to justice but they seem like prescriptive reactionary steps after the deed is done. What prescriptive steps are we formulating where physical assaults do not even occur in perpetrator's mind? What can we introduce in our formal or informal education or methods of social interactions that aggressive mindset is dealt with, to avoid destructive attacks, altogether?