Republic days of the Past

Oh yes, this is how I started the blog with. Musing about the olden golden days. And here we go again. Let's begin. And it's fun. Because this does have a beginning, a middle and an end. Surprisingly beginning and ends are just 1 years each.

Beginning: I don't remember what I did in Lower KG (We called it KG1) but in KG 2, I performed. Stop.... I forgot a prologue.

Prologue: Republic day for me/OF Ambajhari Nagpur, people mean the mega interschool competition held at the ATS grounds in the OF estate. Don't be overwhelmed by the abbreviations and the jargons, it simply means the only stadium in our locality. There used to be 2 sections, KG schools and schools (included primary and secondary). There was competition in 3 categories (March Past, Dance, Mass PT) and finally the coveted best school title). Note that KG schools did not participate in March Past.

Resume Beginning: I was in the dance competition and we danced on the famous 'Jee Ka Janjal' which I also mention in an earlier post. I don't remember whether we won or lost but undoubtedly that was my biggest ever stage appearance. I would believe the typical crowd will be 6-8 thousand people. And that was the end. I never performed anything on the republic day ever after.

Middle: As I said, I never performed after that and the main reason being PT and dance was a girls only territory and march past was for people >= 9th Standard. So lets concentrate on the other factors for this huge period between 1st standard to 10th standard.

Though officially a holiday, thanks to my fathers insistence, we never thought we could NOT go to school that day. Another attraction was the Laddus. After flag hoisting in respective schools, there used to be sweets distribution to all the students in the school. It used to be 2 laddus and a packet of Chewda. Sometimes the school gave just 1 laddu and we would shout that the management is "eating" money. Anyway the point is not that. My mother is a big fan of this school laddus (though they are far from the best) and it was perhaps the only occasion where I could give something to mom instead of she giving something which was the case every time. So fighting with my greed and determination, generally mom will end up with at least half the laddu and I would like to believe that she understood the hardwork that went behind giving her that piece.

The other fact is the feeling of patriotism. Pardon me for generalizing my feelings, I feel Indians are one of the least patriots amongst all countries. At least from what I have seen, patriotism amongst Indians is far less than the US people though its a farce because hardly any of the US people have American roots. But this republic was different. I would wake up and amidst getting ready to go to school, I would surely not miss the live telecast of the republic day celebration from Delhi. With the entire nation, I would also stand up when the national anthem was sung in Delhi with the 21 firings of canon. After that dressed in an all white uniform I will head for the school where until the actual falg hoisting starts, they will play all the patriotic songs most moving being 'Ae mere watan ke logon'. Then after the laddu distribution, we all will head towards the big stadium where the inter-school competitions will start. With one eye on the ongoing events, we will be mainly looking at all the food and small toys shop. We never got our weekly/monthly pocket money but in occasions like these, we did get some (10/- being on the higher side.) We always compromised with cheap food so that we could buy some toy not because the toy is good but because the longevity of a toy or a flag is more than the food and we get more time to show off our purchases. Finally around afternoon, the prizes will be given out and more often than not, it was the 'other' school which won most of it and I came back with a sad face back home. But that is only momentary. Some special cooking by mom will be ready in the tables. I will ask maa about all the details of the various tableau (jhaaki) that were in procession in Rajpath Delhi and who won the best tableau which was mostly goa or lakshwadeep.

Lastly in this middle zone, I also realized that republic day actually marks the entry of spring. It was the first day when I would take off my sweater in the middle of the day and never wear it again.

The end: The end was as undramatic as it can be. I was in 11th standard. There was a divided opinion among that being the last year you can have some fun in school life or being the most crucial year which if neglected will screw up the very important 12th standard. The geek that I am, I was of the second opinion and hence restrained from taking part in the March Past which all others of my class participated in. Me and my firend sumit were the only two 'studious' guys who did not take part but that doesn't mean we didn't come to the event. We were there full time. What extra advantages we got by not participating is a question I still wonder.


Anyway, after this pretty much was the end of republic day celebrations for me. Though we did celebrate it at college, it just involved 5 minutes of flag hoisting ceremony.

New year, new musings

Well, a new year has come. I spent the first few hours of the new year with old and dear college friends partying in California. A great start I should say. A few new year resolutions made only to be forgotten and renewed during the Bengali new year 3.5 months later.

A few trends I have observed. A increase in the number of blog readers. Makes me happy but sad as well at the thought that though people are reading, even those who used to comment, do not comment. And I could trace various reasons for that. Most important is being lazy to type. The second most important reason is that most of the times the topics are so vague and out of the world that people won't connect to it. For example my last 2 cookery posts. Even the 2 posts related to West bengal was not that appreciated. Only bengalis will care about bengal. Whatever, I have decided to go on with my present style of writing irrespective of people's perspective about the blog. The trick is to have good titles to increase the readership. For example, te title of this blog is very vague and will never come up with possible searches. On the other had, things like potter pandal, tasleema nasreen will be widely read.

Coming to the third point, different that I am, from everybody, this one, is another characteristic of mine which right at this moment I am cherishing immensely. There is a bus service in Natick: Natick neighborhood bus, going all around Natick. Nobody except the really old people ride in the bus. those who can't drive or don't have money enough to have a car. Well, as I still haven't got mine, I sometimes travel in that bus. Even a few friends of mine did. But they got scared. They feel depressed seeing all the old people. But for me, it gives me hope, a lot of hope. A hope that I want to live a long life (bolte nei). That during the long life though my children will desert me, the government wont. I can still talk about how Mr X of 72 is dating Ms Y of 76 and how Mrs Z made pudding by mixing pudding powder as per instructions on teh back of the pack. All of them know each other. Today all the 3 of them scolded a 4th lady for not wearing enough winter clothing. I liked the whole fact a lot. Though I feel out of place. Though it should act as a motivation to buy the car soon that I do not have to look out of place, but I think even after I have my car, I will intentionally travel in this bus and sitting in a corner window seat in the back of the car, listen to these old people.

4th point is about doing things alone. People want to do several things alone and several things in groups of different size. To talk a bit yuck, even though bath with your partner may be a good idea, one never wants to potty with other people. While this is straight forward, some other things are difficult to generalize. Like eating food. Some people like it alone and some people like big group. Shopping is another such thing. Now for watching movies at the theater. As far as Indians are concerned, it is very rare that one goes alone. But today I made up my mind. Nobody was ready to see 'Atonement', so I went alone. And it was not bad. Neither was it good because I did miss sharing my ideas about beautiful Kiera, I missed talking about the wonderful transition of typewriter sound to music. But it gave me a lot of self confidence. That I can do even the unimaginable things alone.

Tublu

Sandipan Bollywood Awards 2007

Continuing with the tradition of Sandipan Bollywood Awards from 2006, here we go into our new year.

Disclaimer: Be prepared for a typical Sandipan awards, for there will be plenty of partialities. After all even Oscar and filmfare is not without favoritism. And a close second award will be awarded in some cases. There will be a special category of Razzie awards as well. This year it will be more towards anti feeling towards some than favoritism towards a few. Also, I have not seen many movies this year

Here we go. Let me start with the BollyRazzie awards.

Worst Film: Jhoom Barabar Jhoom. From songs to style to story, everything was pathetic. RGV ki aag doesn’t get this award for 2 starcasts: Urmila and Sushmita

Worst Actor: John Abraham, in Goal.

Worst Actress: Konkona Sen for her various movies. She is terribly overacting nowadays.

Anyway now I come to The mainstream awards.

Best Story: Possibly Taare Zameen Par.(Haven't seen the movie yet though)

Best Song: Sajna di wari wari from Honeymoon travels Pvt Ltd (For the awesome horn effect in the background) and "Om Shanti Om" song with all stars (Esp Juhi and that famous dance step by Rani)

Best Music Director: A.R. Rahman , “Guru”. who else?

Best Singer(Male) : Shankar Mahadevan, Maa from Taare Zameen Par.

Best Singer (Female): Shreya Ghoshal, Barson re megha megha

Best television interview: As an Obituary and posthumous award to Benazir Bhutto in Devil's Advocate especially the way she pronounces "Pakstan" with missing 'i'. The second one goes to Rani in the Madhuri Dikshit KWK interview.

Best Item Song: Mayya Mayya Mallika Sherawat

Lets move on to the main awards now.

Best Comedian: Tabu, Amitabh and Sweeni Khara in Cheeni Kum.(Wittiest movie)

Best Supporting Actor: Mithun Chakrabarty in Guru. Not very sure about this though. Open to better suggestions

Best Supporting Actress: Sweeni Khara for Cheeni Kum.

Best Villain: Shilpa Shukla as Bindiya Nayak in Chak De India

Best Newcomer (male) : Prashant Raj Sachdev in RGV ki aag.(Award given because of lack of better choice)

Best Newcomer (Female) : Sagarika Ghatge (Preeti Sabarwal) in Chak De India.(I hate the eggface Deepika)

Best Actor: Shahrukh Khan for Chak De India (Unanimous).

Best Actress: I don’t want to give this to Cat Eye Kareena (has animosity with Bipasha and dumped Shahid) and neither to Aishwarya (I hate the family of Pati, Patni, Woh(Amar Singh), Beta and Bahu). So the award goes to Soha Ali Khan in 'Khoya Khoya Chaand' for so much looking like her mom.

Best Director: Aamir Khan for 'Taare Zameen Par'

Best Film: Chak De India for creating the enormous impact. The T20WC may be attributed to it.

Comments Welcome!

On Taslima Nasreen

Does it matter? Is everybody supposed to have an opinion on the Taslima issue? Ideally it should not. But somehow I could not stop thinking. I felt the need that I have to have a stance on this issue. But I was confused. Unlike the majority of the blogger society or the news channel projected this to be a violation of artistic freedom, somehow I was never satisfied with the answer.
Another thing is that we should forget the political colors that has been surrounding the entire issue. As for that, there can not be any separate opinion that the political drama was of 3rd grade.

But let's come to the issue of writing something which may hurt the sentiments of certain people. Being an ardent fan of Jane Austen, I feel you need not take the shelter of hot and controversial topics to show off your literary talents. But whenever I think that, the much highlighted term of "Artistic Freedom" keeps poking me. I begin thinking about what would have happened if there were no artistic freedom? Would the world still have been flat? Would the sun still have rotated around the sun and could Archimedes have ever said Eureka? When I think along those lines, I take my view back. This dilema had been haunting me for almost a month now. But suddenly the week before last, I got my answer. And this time it was form Shobhaa Dey in Sunday Times of India 9th Dec.

The gist is this: Let's define the people. If a person is writing controversial thing, it got to have a purpose behind it. Simply writing controversies is a cheap tactics of money making. Noway better than yellow journalism. Let's say Taslima or Rushdie were not yellow journalists. Through their writings, they want to grab the world's attention to the atrocities they thing is a part of their religion with the hope that there will be some kind of action and world wide support which will help in abolishing this problems from the society.

The moment you think on those lines, you are no more an author. You are a human right activist or some rebel or some leader. Authoring becomes just a mean of expanding your net to attract more and more people towards the mission. So the bottomline is, when you write controversies, you should eventually atleast think that what you think will benefit the society and work towards it. Simply writing sensational stuff is a cheap act.

Now what did Taslima do? Agreed, she was in mortal danger in Bangladesh and had to run away. But why did she stop her protests? Why did we never see her in the streets of London/ Kolkata / wherever condemning what she found out in the religion. But I didn't see her fight. Shobhaa just confirms the fact (in case there is some error in my judgement). Taslima should not have been afraid of death. She should have taken her cause to the streets of Bengal. It would have been a test for the cultural capital of India also fr it's reaction to her cause.

Now it falls in line with Galileo/ Leonardo Da Vinci etc. These people were severely punished. But they took their cause to the streets. They believed that the current believes are wrong and people need to change.

I don't think Taslima is brave enough to face the brunt. She is not ready to take her cause to the level when people can actually be benefited. And this is why, I think she is wrong. If you dare, come what may you should go ahead.

Well on a side note, if it were me, I would have chosen the easier way, avoid controversy. NOt the other way round..

Kolkata Headlines ( 2 years from now)

I am tired of the headlines. Ideally I should have been happy because after many many years the news is more about west Bengal than anything else. But it’s all the wrong reasons: Singur, Rizwanur, Nandigram, Moon Das, Taslima and what not. So here I go, a few news items related to West Bengal which I want to be in the Newspapers soon.

Brand Ambassadors Ronaldo and Bipasha at the launch of Rs 1 Lakh Car by TATA in Singur

SMNA, Kolkata: Football superstar Cristiano Ronaldo and Bollywood reigning queen Bipasha Basu were chosen as the brand ambassadors at the occasion of Launch of the new Rs 1 Lakh car by Tata Motors manufactured at Singur near Kolkata. The event was aattended by who’s who world over including Mr Green Al Gore, Prime Minister of India Arun Jaitley, Hollywood diva Julia Roberts and ofcourse the extended Bachchan family: Amitabh, Jaya, Amar Singh, Abhi, Ash and their twin kids Karina and Vivek.

Buddha inaugurates Google Kolkata

SMNA Kolkata: Yesterday was another notable day for Kolkata as Google Inc. opened their Development center in Kolkata. Notable amongst those who were present at the occasion apart form the Google founders was N.R. Narayana Murthy and T.V. Mohandas Pai of Infosys Technologies limited who have just extended their plans of Kolkata office from 10000 to 20000. It might be noted that for a change Infosys will chnge their plans about horizontal establishmensts. The new building is supposed to be 50 storey with 6 storey of parking, an indoor stadium at the first few floors, and complying to the green policies they apre planning to have a garden every 5^th floor.

L.K Advani at the opening of grand transportation project:

SMNA Kolkata: Home minister L.K Advani, (self proclaimed Kolkata hater) has changed his tunes kicked off the new transportation project in the city. The facilities include the following: Merger of Kolkata Metro and Suburban trains with Kolkata transport. The metro has been extended to Barasat and Barrackpore in the north and Jokha in south. Also it is no longer a single line and instead cris crosses the entire city. The suburban trains comply to the time and frequency has been doubled. The wooden buses have been removed. Instead swanky double decker buses will ply all over the city. As a new initiative of Woman’s liberation and equality, the ‘reserved for ladies’ seats have been removed in all the buses. The circular canal transportation project has finally started and people will find it both very hassle free and scenic to use this water transport facility.

World Fiction Authors meet in Netaji Indoor Stadium:

SMNA Kolkata: The 3-day World’s biggest ever Fiction authors kicks off at the new Book Mall at college street. Almost everyone amongst the living fictional authors has gathered in Kolkata for this grand event. This includes the controversial trio of Salman Rushdie, Dan Brown and Taslima Nasrin. The keynote speaker, the new rising star of fiction, Sandipan Mitra will give a lecture on how great books can be written even without controversial topics with generous references to the Austen books. Each day will have some famous book launches. The first day will be launch of yet untitled book by Khaled Hosseni about the fight back of Afghanistan against both the US troops and the Taliban. The second day will be the launch of Jhumpa Lahiri’s ‘The sky and the Begonia’ which for the first time is not about Indians immigrated to US and instead deals about a forest with talking trees. Sources say that it is a satire on modern world politics. But ofcourse the star attraction has been left for the Last day. It is “Advanced Potion Making by Libatius Borage” actually written by J.K Rowling. This book will be 500 pages long. The copy will resemble the one that belonged to the half blood prince. A record 50 million copies have already been pre-booked all over the world.

Special zones for the lovers

SMNA Kolkata: The Kolkata mayor has finally relented to the wishes of the youth. It has made 40 tall walled parks in and around the city where they can carry on with the stuff they want and leave the beautiful places like Millenium Park, Science city and Swabhoomi for family crowd. However it has also been made sure that the minimum age in these parks is 16. Entry is through ID cards.

PS: SMNA is Sandipan Mitra News Agency

Babban Hajaam

Once upon a time, there was a Raja. The Raja was very nice and people were living happily in his kingdom. Suddenly one fine day, Raja’s barber dies. He was very old and has been with the family for a long long time. So obviously the search began for the next barber who can be the King’s barber. After a lot of search, this post was offered to a young lad called Babban. Babban was conscientious, hardworking and diligent; without coaching or reservations he was selected for the royal snip snip snip. As he did ‘Hajaamat, people used to call him ‘Babban Hajaam’. Babban was very happy. After around a month, came the time when Raja needed a haircut. Till that time, he was busy with cutting hairs of the other members of the royal family.

It was a nice Sunday morning. Babban whistled his way to work and continued humming the newest hit song by the courtesan Billo Chamanbhaar. The Raja too was keeping up the beats by patting with his palm on his thighs. Suddenly Babban paused. The Raja did too. Babban continued but alas, the scissors froze.

Babban baulked again. He rubbed his eyes, pinched himself. But still he couldn’t believe his eyes: Horns on the royal pate? O swami of Hari-ki-Dun! The Raja half-turned and with a straight index finger on a shivering mousatche said – “Sshhhhhhshshsh, if you say another word about this to anybody, that will be the last day of your life.” And thus it wound up, with a scrape scrape and brush brush and talcum powder puff puff, and certainly no mirror.

After this, a peculiar thing started happening. As hours progressed, Babban’s tummy swelled. By late evening, his tummy was of the size of a football. By next day morning, the swelling reached upto his neck and he was looking like a big barrel. By Tuesday, his whole body swelled up and he became like a huge balloon. This was happening because he couldn’t keep the secret for such a long time. At last, the poor lad tried to run but it looked more like he was rolling. He rolled towards the woods. Finally when he was deep inside, he told the secret to a tree. He told the tree – “Raja ke sar pe seeeeeng”. Soon he shrunk back to his normal shape.

But now, the tree started swelling and it swelled well. One fine day, after 6 months or so, a woodcutter was walking though the forest and he saw this tree with a huge trunk. He tapped on the trunk. It gave a nice hollow sound. He thought, “Wow, this makes such a nice sound. This wood will be awesome for musical instruments.” So he cut the tree and gave the trunk to his friend who was a maker of musical instruments. The friend was very happy and gave him a lot of cash in return. The friend made 3 instruments out of it: A violin, a harmonium and a set of Tabla. Soon after he made them, a band of musicians came over and were very impressed by the quality of the instrument and bought them at a very good price.

Soon, one day the singers were called to the durbar of the Raja. It was a great day. It was Raja’s birthday. There were a lot of Durbaris. Nice looking women dressed in the shady kind of clothes that the Apsaras Menka and Rambha generally wear, were serving food and paan to all the durbaris. After a scintillating performance by Raja’s favourite Billo Chamanbahaar, came the turn of these musicians, the rising stars of the kingdom.

People waited with baited breath. The musicians came to the stage and started tuning their instruments. In the middle, while they were checking the sound system, suddenly the violin lifted on its own and started playing by itself:

Raja ke Sar pe Seeeeng.. raja ke sar pe seeeeeeng.

Soon the harmonium also started off:

Kisne Bataya Kisne Bataya

And the tabla started the beats:

Babban Hajaam Ne, Babban Hajaam ne.

All the people in the court fell of the chairs laughing. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, could not put the courtiers back on their chairs again.

Note: I would like to thank Kaushik Ramu for the bare bone structure of the story

Fastest Egg recipe

Let this thanksgiving be about a few recipe posts from me. Like the earlier one, this one is also pretty open ended and may need a few trails before perfecting. Before I go ahead with the recipe, let me thank my friend Nirmal for introducing this recipe to me.
The main advantages of this recipe are:
1) If you want to eat egg, and not the house smell, you eat egg boiled. This takes atleast 20 minutes. So by the time the egg actually is ready, you have lost your appetite. This recipe just takes 3 minutes literally.
2) If you are a stickler like me who believe in not loading the sink with used utensils, this is a boon, u need only 1 vessel to cook and that too easy to wash. Compare this with an omelette vessel where you need two, one to beat and one pan to fry.

OK, now lets go ahead with the recipe:
Ingredients:

1) 2 eggs.
2) one tsp vegetable oil.
3) Mushroom/Peas etc (Optional) if you want to have something inside your omelette.

Procedure:

1) Take a microwavable stone/china bowl. The bigger base, the better.
2) Break the eggs in the bowl, add salt, optional veg and beat it for sometime.
3) Pour oil along the edges. The lesser the better.
4) Microwave for 2 minutes. You can take it out after one minute, scramble it a bit and put it back again.
5) Scrambled egg is ready. No smell, no vessel, you can eat in the same bowl.

Recipe: ShimlaMirch-Aaloo Ambajhari (Indian gravy based Capsicum and Potato)

After a long long time, I did something I really wanted to do. I cooked the way I wanted. It was nothing like slight variation. But definitely a mix and match of many different recipes. Lets call it ShimlaMirch-Aaloo Ambajhari , a Capsicum and Potato Recipe. If there exists Hyderabadi Biryani and Veg Kolhapuri, why not this. BTW Ambajhari is a place near Nagpur where I was born and brought up)

Ingreditents:

For the gravy:

1) Onion

2) Tomato in any form (paste, chopped, chunks)

3) Groundnut powder (1-2tbsp)

4) Grated Coconut (Only if you like it)

5) Yoghurt (Optional)

6) Chilli Powder/ Green Chillies (Depending on ur palate)

7) Garlic and/or ginger

8) Anything you find interesting to put in a paste form (Cashew, Raisins etc)

For the curry:

1) Capsicum (cut into 0.5 square inch pieces approx)

2) Potato (boiled and cut into small pieces, again around 0.5 cubc inches)

3) Salt (to taste)

4) Any Indian masala ( I tried tava fry masala) 1 tsp (Just for flavor)

Procedure:

As you have already noticed, the quantity is not specified in any of the main ingreditents because I feel it strictly depends on your taste. For example, my onion ratio was a bt on the higher side resulting in a ‘Jhanjhalo’ ( a Bengali word, basically the adjective for reason why onion makes u cry).

1) Put all the ingredients in the ‘For the Gravy’ section in a blender and blend it well.

2) Heat oil in a pan. Add the usual cumin and mustard seeds if you want to, else leave)

3) Pour the contents of the blender in the pan and fry till oil separates. This will take a long time. So you can put salt, turmeric (optional) in between.

4) Add the masala of your wish towards the end stages of oil separating.

5) Put the capsicum and some water. Allow it to boil depending on how crunchy you like your capsicum.

6) Towards the end, add the boiled potatoes, mix well and remove from heat.

It tastes the way you want it to taste, because you have decided the quantities and the products too.

You can do this with any vegetables. Some suggestions:

1) Only Cauliflower (Boil the cauliflower first. You don’t want this raw)

2) Peas and Potato

3) Only Potato

4) Paneer

5) Mushrooms

Dada

Well dada means a lot of things. To me, it means my elder brother Sambaran. To many of the people, in a typical work/society the elder Bengali will be called a Dada. In the roads of Bengal, till sometime back, it was the same as Anna of Chennai or Swami of mangalore. But ofcourse, most likely if you ask anybody, who is Dada, the answer will be: Who else but Sourav Ganguly.

It took some time for me to accept his popularity. I always thought it’s only West Bengal, and seems the truth is not very different. I have even seen many people getting jealous. ( but pretending to be either angry or disgusted or as a big shot of cricket and denounce him). But this is the truth, the way Ganguly is adored in West Bengal, no body will ever be adored in any part of India.

As they say, you have to be there to feel it. I don’t get many chances to go to Kolkata and which coincides with some cricket match, but it is a sight to watch. The whole time Dada is on crease (which thankfully is generally not much), is like some last moments of world cup final. People observe every movement of his, will do ‘ishhh’ on his misses and jump on his fours and sixes. It’s just amazing being with all of these. You can’t dislike him anymore.

Ofcourse then, it’s quite obvious, that Chapell will be considered villain. No way can people forgive him when he did something that bad to their won dada. But it was poor Dravid who also got the wrath of the people for no good reason, simply because he was the one who replaced dada. When I tried to discuss any cricket in these lines with any common person (not some very jaankar kind of), it seemed I am a fool if I think otherwise that Chapell may be right, dravid may be good.

The guy who comes out clean in this case and for that matter any controversy, is Sachin. At a position, when he can command anything he wants, they way he never shows his temper and maintains his image is simply amazing. No wonder people refer him as the God.

Anyway, coming back to Ganguly, I now realize, that the reason for his popularity is that he has been the only achiever for Bengal for a long long time. Amartya Sen, though a Bengali has been too long outside to be considered a son of soil, and so are Arundhati, Jhumpa, Rani, Sushmita or Bipasha. Though you see almost half of the reporters in the news channels as Bengalis (leading the pack ofcourse is Sagarika Ghosh) they are all what we call “Probashi Bangali”s. To add to it, the Bengal politics is in a mess, the govt is in the hands of people whos average age is 70+ and the opposition is a lady who has left her brains somewhere long ago. The recent situations in Nandigram makes matter even worse. In all this, the only good thing that has happened to West Bengal in last 15 years is just Dada. No wonder then why Bengalis react to him this way.

Before I end, just as an unrelated note, have any of you read the recent reports of peaceful demonstrations in Kolkata, which was described as a march by the intelligentsia, the writers, the film personalities and the socialites. I just wonder who constitute the intelligentsia :)

Gujarat riots, Tehelka Expose

I feel so sad, and to a certain extent guilty, about the Gujarat riots. Tehelka has exposed the fact that Mr. Narendra Modi was behind the riots. But didn’t we all know about that? People may have had doubts about the extent of his involvements but rumors never spread out of thin air, and especially rumors this big (not Rani marrying Aditya, for that matter even the initially debunked rumors about aish and abhishek had some base in it). So Narendra Modi is guilty and in this case, less or more doesn’t matter.

People always tend to think the wrong directions or biased opinions in this case. The learned Muslims know the lesser said the better. The illiterate Muslims do what the Qazis tell them to, who in turn are politically inclined. What depresses me is the opinions that the Hindus have. There are fanatic Hindus who went on describing about the barbaric deaths of the people who were burnt in the train. And they tend to justify the riots based on this presumption. There are a bunch of Anti-Hindu hindus (Yes, there are lot of them), who think that the Godhra Train massacre was also self created by the Hindus just as an opportunity to kill the people. In either of these, people are moving from the depth and gravity of the situation to petty finger pointing.

I have simple views. I believe the first reactions of the people are always true. The fast reactions can generally never be painted. So I do believe that something bad happened in the train. But what I DO believe is no matter what happens anywhere, killing people is never a solution. Even though it is in retaliation of something really disgusting. So I condemn the entire Gujarat riots. I know people will agree with me up to this point. Now I will go further and say that though Modi and a few others who may be responsible for the riots, I will, as a human being, consider it as barbaric as the riots if somebody kills these people. Let the justice take its action. (I firmly believe capital punishment should be banished. There are ways to let people live their entire life in repentance and guilt of a terrible crime than just kill them).

I would like to mention the Grahams Staines death. This may be true that the means Graham Staines adopted to spread the word of Christianity were really of the third degree. But that doesn’t qualify somebody to kill him and his children. Again, I tend to believe it’s not Dara Singh who is alone responsible for this. It must be some rich educated hindu fanatic who brainwashed his mind and made hi commit the murder.

The root of all these become very apparent. Lack of good education which should promote clarity of unbiased thoughts. And as my Mom and Dad say, Rabindranath Tagore has written something about every situation, which appears to be true in this case, I end my blog with some lines which I consider very relevant:

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way

into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee

into ever-widening thought and action--

Into that heaven of freedom,

My Father, let my country awake.