Since the last few months, Christians are being systematically targeted in Orissa. Churches have been burnt, tribal Christians have been forced to re-convert to Hinduism and worse of all, a nun was brutally raped.
Sister Meena talks of the rape.
"One of them tore my blouse and others my undergarments. Fr Chellan protested and they beat him and pulled him out from there. They pulled out my saree and one of the stepped on my right hand and another on my left hand and then a third person raped me on the verandah mentioned above. When it was over, I managed to get up and put on my petticoat and saree. Then another young man caught me and took me to a room near the staircase. He opened his pants and was attempting to rape me when they reached there.
I hid myself under the staircase. The crowd was shouting “where is that sister, come let us rape her, at least 100 people should rape.” They found me under the staircase and took me out to the road. There I saw Fr. Chellan was kneeling down and the crowd was beating him up. They were searching for a rope to tie us both of us together to burn us in fire. Someone suggested to making us parade naked. They made us walk on the road till Nuagoan market which was half a kilometer from..."
Is this the tolerant India we boast about all the time? Have we totally forgotten what our eternal father, Mahatma Gandhi, taught us? He had said that he was a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Sikh, a Parsi. This is what has kept us together for so many years. Not the lunar probes that we send or the numerous acquisitions that Indian companies are making abroad. Tolerance is the basis of our great nation. That is because of this virtue that our glorious religion has taught us, that is what our Father of the nation has taught us.
Tolerance is the key to keep India as one, despite its numerous languages, religions, castes, communities. Gandhiji understood this. It seems we are forgetting this.
By letting Hindu hardliners to burn churches and rape nuns we are in fact breaking the strong roots of India. We are cutting our own legs, so to speak.
Why do those hotheads in Orissa forget that sister Meena (the nun who was raped) is an Indian first, then a Christian. We are raping our own sister. What could be more shameful than this?
Erudite commentators in the media talk of the killing of Swami Lakshamananda by either Christian themselves or by the Maoists instigated by the Christians, that has let hell loose in Orissa. But does this justify what is happening now?
Whoever killed the good Lakshamananada is equally culpable and is no better than the guys who raped sister Meena or broke churches. But aren't they Indians too? Why are Maoists proliferating in many pockets of India. Because we all Indians have failed some where. We forgot the most poor and oppressed in the country. These are the Maoists and their backbone supporters. Maoist violence is not a law and order problem. It is the failure of the Indian state and a failure of all of us that we forgot the misery of the many poor people.
Hindutva followers say the Christians are offering money and jobs to the poor tribals and converting them into Christianity. Haven't we all failed in doing just that to every Indian. If the Christian missionaries are doing that in Orissa, what is the problem. Hindu or Christian, the tribals at least have jobs and food to eat.
The goons who are in the rampage in Orissa should understand this first. Give a job to every Indian first. Make sure first that every Indian has enough to eat every day. Do that first. Then worry about the threat to Hinduism from Christianity. Don't worry about Hinduism. It is too great a religion to be threatened by anything.
The goons who raped sister Meena are not Hindus.
Rape of a nun in Orissa:Is this the India we want?
Rape of a nun in Orissa:Is this the India we want?
Since the last few months, Christians are being systematically targeted in Orissa. Churches have been burnt, tribal Christians have been forced to re-convert to Hinduism and worse of all, a nun was brutally raped.
Sister Meena talks of the rape.
"One of them tore my blouse and others my undergarments. Fr Chellan protested and they beat him and pulled him out from there. They pulled out my saree and one of the stepped on my right hand and another on my left hand and then a third person raped me on the verandah mentioned above. When it was over, I managed to get up and put on my petticoat and saree. Then another young man caught me and took me to a room near the staircase. He opened his pants and was attempting to rape me when they reached there.
I hid myself under the staircase. The crowd was shouting “where is that sister, come let us rape her, at least 100 people should rape.” They found me under the staircase and took me out to the road. There I saw Fr. Chellan was kneeling down and the crowd was beating him up. They were searching for a rope to tie us both of us together to burn us in fire. Someone suggested to making us parade naked. They made us walk on the road till Nuagoan market which was half a kilometer from..."
Is this the tolerant India we boast about all the time? Have we totally forgotten what our eternal father, Mahatma Gandhi, taught us? He had said that he was a Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, a Sikh, a Parsi. This is what has kept us together for so many years. Not the lunar probes that we send or the numerous acquisitions that Indian companies are making abroad. Tolerance is the basis of our great nation. That is because of this virtue that our glorious religion has taught us, that is what our Father of the nation has taught us.
Tolerance is the key to keep India as one, despite its numerous languages, religions, castes, communities. Gandhiji understood this. It seems we are forgetting this.
By letting Hindu hardliners to burn churches and rape nuns we are in fact breaking the strong roots of India. We are cutting our own legs, so to speak.
Why do those hotheads in Orissa forget that sister Meena (the nun who was raped) is an Indian first, then a Christian. We are raping our own sister. What could be more shameful than this?
Erudite commentators in the media talk of the killing of Swami Lakshamananda by either Christian themselves or by the Maoists instigated by the Christians, that has let hell loose in Orissa. But does this justify what is happening now?
Whoever killed the good Lakshamananada is equally culpable and is no better than the guys who raped sister Meena or broke churches. But aren't they Indians too? Why are Maoists proliferating in many pockets of India. Because we all Indians have failed some where. We forgot the most poor and oppressed in the country. These are the Maoists and their backbone supporters. Maoist violence is not a law and order problem. It is the failure of the Indian state and a failure of all of us that we forgot the misery of the many poor people.
Hindutva followers say the Christians are offering money and jobs to the poor tribals and converting them into Christianity. Haven't we all failed in doing just that to every Indian. If the Christian missionaries are doing that in Orissa, what is the problem. Hindu or Christian, the tribals at least have jobs and food to eat.
The goons who are in the rampage in Orissa should understand this first. Give a job to every Indian first. Make sure first that every Indian has enough to eat every day. Do that first. Then worry about the threat to Hinduism from Christianity. Don't worry about Hinduism. It is too great a religion to be threatened by anything.
The goons who raped sister Meena are not Hindus.
ANGELINA JOLIE disappoints
Angelina Jolie disappoints. She says motherhood has changed her. She is less ambitious and her top priority is her family.
She told the Italian version of Vanity Fair,
"The kids are my priority, so it's possible that from now on I will make fewer movies. I may even stop altogether. I no longer have the ambition I had in my 20s."
Every actress that I know of has said the same thing after marriage and a kid. It breaks the backbone of the feminist cause of female empowerment.
The message is a go-getter woman loses her drive to excel at work after become a mother and loves matrimony. Then why do people crib (specially women) that it is a man's worl? You are giving up the fight after a baby. Then why crib?
Is it that Jolie has gone soft or is it that it is in the female genes? the cave woman who stays back in the cave to tend after the baby while the man goes out hunting. Hope it is not in the genes. Then the cause of feminism has no chance to succeed.
SHORT STORY: The sensitive guy with chronic diarrhoea
The guy sniffed. He had cried like a small kid who is losing his mother some minutes ago. The girl was exasperated. She had expected a romantic evening but what she had got was a 25 year old guy who wanted mama.
It had started well. The girl and the guy had gone together on a college trip. That is how they had met the first time. He had liked her smiling face. She had liked his aloofness. Any girl would love the strong silent types. He turned out to be silent but hardly the strong types.
But I am jumping the gun. To go back to the trip. They had started become friends on the trip. They kept in touch after they returned to Bombay. The guy sent her flowers when she fell ill with a bout of flu. He presented her a Somerset Maugham novel on her birthday. Though she never read books, she was touched and invited him to her home for the evening.
The guy was a sensitive soul. He had a difficult childhood. Well meaning but a simpleton mother who never understood her son. The father was a hard man, who had no time to sit and talk to his son. The result was a young man of 25 years who was painfully sensitive and who suffered from chronic diarrhoea. He had got no love from the parents. He was a mild guy and had not been taken seriously by his school 'friends.'
The guy at 25 years now thought that only a nice girl was what he needed. Romantic notions of a understanding lover, who would not mind that he had chronic diarrhoea.
So when he went to the girl's house that evening, he felt encouraged when the girl kissed him on the lips. He poured out his heart to her. He told her everything. The aloof parents, the uncaring friends and of course the chronic diarrhoea.
He touched the girl's maternal chord. She too became sentimental at the sad story. She told him to make love to her. But the guy wanted understanding, not coition. He could not make love to her.
Fifteen minutes later they sat in the drawing room in a uncomfortable silence.
"Do you love me?", asked the guy.
The girl was miffed at the failed sexual experience. Moreover the sentimental stage had passed. She was vividly aware of the fact that a weak man sat beside her on the sofa. But telling him to get lost would have seemed, well, inconsiderate.
"No", she replied, "but we can be good friends."
"Not friends, I want your love." said the guy. "I am 25 years old. Seems unlikely that I will find love again."
"Fuck your 25 years," barked the girl.
That is when the guy had started sniffing. The dreams of true love had gone in a puff of smoke. Life was tough. He was still alone. He sniffed and went home.
Raj Thackeray is breaking India
Raj Thackeray's mother should have spanked him when he was little. Or his pa should have given him a nice hiding then. That would have spared us the headache he is causing us now.
Raj reminds me a of a six year kid who lives in my building. He is a menace. Whenever he comes down in the evenings to play, he uses the cricket bat not to hit the rubber ball (and break window panes) but to break the poor plastic chairs lying around provided by the society committee for people to sit in the evenings. Neighbours say the kid keeps breaking things at home too.
Raj Thackeray is like that. He wants to break things. He wants to break the communal harmony in Maharashtra. He wants to separate the Marathi from the Indians. Why? To win elections. If he keeps doing this he will probably become the president one day, not of India, but of a new country called Maharashtra. Raj is unwittingly breaking India.
He thinks he is the reincarnation of Shivaji. Some one should tell him that the Mughals are gone since a long time. In Delhi is an government we all elect, not seizing power through coups or battles.
Be proud to be an Indian first, then be a Marathi. They forgot to teach him that at school.
The government in Maharashtra and New Delhi are weak. They should act swiftly. Raj Thackeray is breaking the tenets of the Indian Constitution. It is pure treason. The jihadis must be loving this guy. He is doing their job for them. Chipping away at India.
Hope Obama wins
Remember the funny gestures he made a few days back. Looked childish. Effect of some old head injuries in Vietnam?
The US elections are hotting up. Joe Bidden made a gaffe, McCain pounced on it and Obama did the whitewashing. The men are separating from the boys. No wonder Biden got thrown out early in the campaign!
SHORT STORY: The old woman and the dog
The old woman lay quivering in the night. The shop was closed and so she lay there beside the downed shutter. It was raining quite heavily. The wind was quite chilly so she tried to cover herself, quite fruitlessly, with the tattered quilt.
She had not eaten anything since two days. Since it was damp and raining, not may people ventured out. Fewer people meant less charitable folks who would give her a packet of biscuit or a loaf of bread to eat. But the woman did not mind. She did not really feel hungry. Her body was too weak to register hunger.
The stray dog, which lay beside her, snuggled up to her. The animal was quite attached to the woman. Whenever she had had anything to eat, she would share it with it.
Since the last two days, the dog could feel there was something wrong with the woman. She did not talk to it. In fact she hardly moved. The dog had managed to snatch some bread from the nearby trash can. So it was not hungry. All it wanted was the warmth of the old woman. But today she was getting cold.
The dog whimpered and sat up. It sniffed at the woman and licked her face. It was stone cold.
The animal some how understood that she was dead. It sat howling as it thundered in the skies above.
A car passed by. It splashed water on the dead body of the old woman. The late night show at the nearby film theatre had just ended.
I wept after I wrote this. I weep unabashedly every time I read this. I wish to God I could do something that such an old woman does not die on the road, unsung; her life story dead with her. But social work has become a business too. For social workers their work is another profession. It should be a passion. But sadly NGOs recruit MBAs, not people with compassion and a feeling for their work.
The real secret of happiness in life
What do you live for? Good food? Sex? Family? Friends? Self improvement? This is a question that most of us don't ask ourselves. "Life is ...for living." Who wants to go deeper and think?
But it is necessary. Sit down quietly with no distractions and ask yourself, "what is the aim in life?" If the answers come out like, "I gotta provide for wife and kids", then bullshit. You are confused. Or you haven't thought deep enough. You are caught in the rut of existence. Most of us are. But this continues fine till your inner self rebels strongly. That is when you rebel too. You pick fights with the wife, slap your your kids and frown at your 'close' friends.
If you have reached this stage, think again. That means no one understands you. Not your wife. Not your friends. They will all want status quo. This status quo is your biggest enemy to discover yourself. Believe me, most of us have not discovered even 20% of ourselves. Your inner self is a gold mine of limitless treasure. Discover them and you will find true happiness.
Know yourself. That is most important. Don't feel saddened or guilty about yourself. Be brutally honest. But don't tell anyone else about your thoughts. Often your family and 'best friends' will turn out to be the impediments.
Sit down. Then think and then know what you are. Listen to your heart. What are your wants. Listen to the inner voice. It may have gone faint as years of neglect might have weakened it (and also weakened you). But listen to it carefully. And follow it.
Your inner urges. Things you wanted to do years ago but you could not do because of compulsions. If it is possible, do them now. These inner urges are the real you. Don't run away from them or you will never be happy.
Parents: A different view
Parents. The word has been eulogised umpteen times in books and movies. The general perception is that parents means goodness. But this is not the case always.
To understand things better let us get our fundas clear without being sentimental. What are parents supposed to do. They are supposed give birth to kids and then look after till they grow up. Man is an animal too. He has this primal urge to procreate. So children are born.
Again the maternal instinct of the mother takes over. It looks after the fledgelings. The father provides the 'bread'. Like in birds. The male goes out and brings insects to feed the chicks and the female bird.
So we see all this is primeval stuff. There is no humanity involved. Most animals do it too. Society has no problem with this as these norms gives stabiility. Where else would the kids grow up? In houses run by the state? Most governments do not have resources to do that. So the parents look after the kids, feed them, pay for their education.
And what do they get in return? Love and affection from the grown up kids. This would be the ideal case. But in real life the ideal is hardly seen.
Many parents want to procreate but do not want to take responsibility for the kids growing up. I guess every human is not like the birds. Some are like those animals that feed on their offsprings. Check out Animal Planet. I am not kidding. This would the case of fathers raping their own daughters. Remember that Austrian old guy who kept his daughter locked up in the cellar for many years, had sex with her and had numerous children from her. This is the case of society rules not working.
They do not work most of the time. How many parents are all love and understanding? Very few. Most are like, "we gave birth to you, fed you and paid for your school fees. We have done you a big favour! Don't ever forget that."
What the hell! We have no say in the matter. We did not ask for our birth. We did not ask for being fed and having the school fees paid! Then why is this 'contract' thrust upon the kid?
Most of the time, the parents do not make the effort to understand their kid. They are not understanding and are not there when the kid needed them the most. Lousy job of parenting, I would say!
The kid has no other option but to stay in the parent's home. The parents thrust their expectations (mostly unreasonable) on the poor kid. They also thrust their weaknesses, fears and neuroses on the kid. Most kids grow up psyched, especially in Asian countries, where parental control is total.
Who cares a fig for the kid? Nobody! All this sucks! Life is unfair.
SHORT STORY: The policeman and terror suspect
He was called 'the butcher' in the police department. The top brasses kept him away on harmless duties most of the time. But when it came to giving the third degree, he was inevitably called in. His USP was that he was a total animal. He beat and tortured without remorse. In fact he enjoyed it. Dark rumours float about that after a good beating, the butcher would rush to the toilet; and not for urinating or defecating.
His wife had left him (run away would be describing it better) just after two days of marriage. She was horrified of his sadistic style of fornication. But when it came to breaking the most hardened of criminals, the butcher was the man for the job.
Tonight the call had come to 'interrogate' a young boy of eighteen. He had been picked up after it was suspected that he was involved in the recent city bombings. The boy was a computer whiz. His field of specialisation was hacking. The investigators believed that this boy was responsible for the emails send to the media after the bombings. Which was true.
The boy had grown up in a rich family and had had a good education. But he had uncaring parents that had made him rebellious in life. His obsession with computers led to hacking and making a lot of money. His motive was not the money. It was his anger at his parents and hatred towards society. He had never felt loved. Not by his parents nor by the string of girlfriends that he had. Girls were attracted to the easy money he made from the web.
It was pure accident that the boy came in the radar of the terrorist organization. The chief planner of the bombings wanted a hacker and the boy was suggested by someone. The leader started by brainwashing the boy. It was easy. he had a lousy, insecure childhood. And he was the rebellious types. The boy had initially felt honoured and wanted when first approached by the leader. Later he was hooked on the numerous stories of atrocities that the 'bad' government committed. This clicked with the rebellious nature of the boy. What finally clinched the deal was the rewards after death. Beautiful maidens waiting for him in the other world.
So he did as instructed. But he was caught, betrayed by another jealous hacker.
He was in the cell now.
He had been questioned by some police officers. But the boy was cheeky by nature. he was smart and had outwitted all questions. He hated his parents and he hated society. He blamed it for his loneliness. So he hated the police too. So he had stalled any attempt to extract information. After all he was a responsible person now, doing great work. And those lovely girls in the heavens? How could he betray the cause? He would miss out on the girls.
So he had stalled. He had taken some beatings. His smartness and his hatred for society kept him going.
That was when the butcher was called in. One can deal with humans with intelligence and emotions. But how does one deal with an animal that has none of the either?
Unprintable things happened in the cell that night.
As the butcher staggered out of the cell to go to the toilet, the other police officers glanced into the cell.
Inside was not a boy. It was the remains of a prey. The boy had gone insane. He talked a lot of things. He talked of his parents, his hacking triumphs and the innumerable girls he had bedded. And he told everything about the email send after the bombings.