freebird

!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>What to write? Silence. Pause. Look left, look right, scratch your neck, your beard, ears and nose. More silence or noise. Clickety clackety. Press delete. Undo. Rewrite. Delete. Read and re read. Silence. Umm. Now what? Get up. Take a walk. Take deep breaths. Do something else. Come back. Save as ‘same thing new’. Have a different perspective. Take a print out. Read it. Ruminate. Have a smoke. How to continue, move on? Switch the television. Might get ideas. Read a book. Same result. No inspiration. Now what? Something wrong today. The air probably. My seat or the cushion. The hands not getting enough support. The light from the screen not right, hurting today. Go to controls. Reduce the contrast, brightness. To no avail.

EUREKA. The basement. The sealed carton. Rush down the stairs. Tear it open. Where is it? Is it the right box? I think it is. There…i can already feel it. Just after this. YES.

Where is the rag? Rag, rag, rag. Why do you throw rags away? Use your handkerchief. What difference does it make? O.k. Clean it well. Be nice and gentle and kind. You have used it in the past. Your father used it. An entire era, century used it. And then forgot about it. Will it save me today? Will I think straight now that my old friend is back? Don’t be foolish. It’s a passing whim, a fancy, will go away, die with your sleep. Will it live beyond the morning tomorrow. Answer that honestly. Ummm.

Get back to the job. Clean it. Now where are the papers? Has the size of the paper changed? Will A4 do right? Where is the printer? Carbon? Where is the carbon. There is no carbon. Carbon is…forget the carbon paper.

The paper fits. Great. Will the ribbon work. Let’s see.

IT WORKS.

Should I get back to this? I shall keep it in the open from now on. It looks good as an antique. My typewriter.

!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>British Midlands are submerged. London though is safe. After all, its the capital and so much depends on the capital city. People have been evacuated, crops have been destroyed and the army has been called in. It’s PANIC STATIONS. Rescue and relief operations are still udnerway.

Do people from the developing and 3^rd world countries like India smile in glee when something of this sort happens in a developed / European country? Possibly. Nature, finally restores parity between the haves and have - nots the pantheists would assert. It was bound to happen etc.

But obviously there are more scientific reasons than God. Weather patterns say scientists and naturists. Global warming rears its ugly head once again. These occurrences at untimely periods, what do they portend. The Theban elders would have read an oracle. Shakespeare too would have seen a sign. So will my grandmother. ‘Nature is unstuck’.

Now go figure all you enlightened souls with your calibrated instruments and glib rhetoric. And don’t you worry there will be examples galore…footprints in the sands of time…this is how we destroyed…slow and eager while debating brilliantly about protocols and GDP’s and carbon footprints.

I predict that ‘Spoiler’ will be the word of the year, thanks largely to the Harry Potter phenomenon. Nobody wants to be told by someone else what happens to Harry in the end. And to experience for the 1^st time the rush and excitement of reading the end people have done all things imaginable.

Predictably Potter mania has also struck Indian shores. Sales have, as expected, hit the ceiling. People across the metros have been queuing to buy the book and read the ending before spoilers spawn across the universe.

Will the ‘spoiler’ become the scare of the art fraternity of the future? All endings and plot details threatened with premature exposure and death. It could also be a good marketing tool. Teams of dedicated professionals who feed the scare to such an extend that it initially drives the sales, then over-exposure leading to doubts and then the eventual death of the ‘spoilerman’ or woman.

The book has been translated into Hindi also and is enjoying great sales. Young authors are writing science fiction and fantasy and more importantly they want to read the written word. Long live the Spoiler.

!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>Kashiwazaki – the world’s biggest nuclear power plant is going to be shut; at least for the summer if not for the entire year. The plant is responsible for 10% of Japan’s energy needs. Honda has reduced its production. Many other industries have called for cuts in production anticipating power shortages in the future. TEPCO has been criticized for under reporting the entire accident. Another radioactive leak at the plant has been reported. Independent experts are still evaluating the accident not relying completely on Tepco analysts.

Energy Needs vs Security vs Will of People vs Government vs YOU

The Indian Doc Mohd. Haneef while leaving England, left a sim card with his cousins because of some residual talk time balance. The cousins tried to blow up the Glasgow airport. Now Haneef has been arrested although the courts in Australia have set him free. Homegrown critics are saying that it is the right-winger Prime Minister’s ploy in an electoral year. Haneef’s wife in Bangalore, India is pregnant.

What a MESS? Haneef was almost guilty before the courts realized that having a SIM card is probably essential in 21^st century. Leaving your SIM card with a relative is no SIN at all. And they basically accepted after the days of detention that there is no proof – so the courts gave the judgement – set him free.

But paranoia got the better of everybody. Zenophobia in an election year is welcome said the campaign managers. So in goes Haneef and…

Back in India people were aghast. They said Indian Muslims are different and the spotless record speaks volumes for itself etc etc. They all forgot about the homegrown militants of different religions and ethnicities that have plagued the nation and still do.

Anyways what’s terror got to do with education. In fact it’s better if the terrorist is educated. Increasingly they will be at par with the mean men that we see in slick, high-end Hollywood flicks where they will write complex programs on their laptops ensconced in a tent anywhere on the planet and issue threats while sipping on Starbucks or kawah whatever takes his or her fancy. Technological democracy will empower them.

Coming back to Haneef - how will he integrate back into society and his fraternity?

!– @page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>Kashiwazaki, Niigata, Japan

Kashiwazaki was hit by an earthquake of 6.8 magnitude.

Kashiwazaki is MESS.

Kashiwazaki. How big is the threat? Is it going to affect the people long after the obvious declarations of no-harm done? Has the great debate begun again? Is there anything called a safe nuclear reactor? Should they exist even for the general benefit of large numbers of the human population? Is it the fuel of the future? Be better prepared to live with collateral damage. Make it a part and parcel of normal existence and you will have less of grief.

But imagine the harm to the same country that has suffered the worst historically. What should Japan do? What does the nation’s conscience say when it comes to all thing nuclear? Is nuclear all that important?

Are the authorities hiding information that should be released to the general public. Should outside regulators go and assess independently the damage caused to the site and reactors. Tepco president has said that it is ‘MESS’. So what is the extent of this mess? How to contain this mess? And more importantly can we start talking about it so that it never happens again.

10 Places To Stay

1. Live on an island

    

2. Live on a coffee plantation

    

3. Stay in an igloo

    

4. Stay in a condominium

    

5. Stay in a village

    

6. Stay in a ‘machan’ or a tree-house

    

7. Live in tents

    

8. One night on top of the Everest

    

9. On a cruise liner

    

10. In a submarine

     

People die every day. They die all around us. It’s the sun sometimes or the rains or the cold and God and sometimes us. But in Delhi, the capital of India there exists a BEING called BLUE LINE. This being has an insatiable appetite for death and destruction. They have a voracious appetite…of 4 to 5 people per day. What is this BEING? Blue Lines are BUSES. A fleet of buses privately owned and operated. Rumor is that most of these buses are owned by Delhi politicians.

I did my college from Delhi in 1994-99. Blue Lines were a threat, a scare even then. They had a healthy average even then…of taking 3-5 people to their graves every day. It’s been more than 10 years and yet Blue Lines enjoy unfettered freedom. They kill with impunity and the driver jumps and escapes. Sometimes the driver is caught and thrashed. Other times the bus is stoned or set on fire. Meanwhile people die.

But why does the Blue Line kill. Greed. That’s all. The more money you earn and take to your Boss the more cut you get. How do you get more people to get onto your bus. By speeding, by breaking lane driving rules, by overtaking when you are not supposed to, by driving over the speed limit and the list goes on and on…

The result is obvious.

After a spate of deaths in the last fortnight people have started to protest. They will for some time and then the way life goes they too have to move on. Can’t protest forever now can you?

In the meantime the great Indian political circus will try to milk the anger, frustration and helplessness of the families in direct proportion to the approaching election dates. Post the elections your guess is as good as mine.

Meanwhile people wait at bus stops. To be run over.

Who or what can put an end to this? Civic activism, government ordnance, PIL, other violent forms of protest or should we try something else for a change. Something peaceful. Probably what Munnabhai would have done. Don’t board the Blue Line. Simple. Walk to work, make scooter or car – pools, take DTC buses, cycle but don’t board the killer buses. Let them die on their own. Nobody will miss them.

‘As we sow, so we reap’ is an old saying. So old that we have forgotten about it. We hear it from old people and then forget. We are skeptical of it. Is it really true? We do good and good happens back to us? Is that so? 21^st century doesn’t believe in such naïve concepts.

But people in Pakistan could have a new different take on the old as jesus saying. For long secure in the knowledge that home grown militancy won’t bite the hand that feeds it the Lal Masjid incident has woken them up? Has it? I am not sure. It gave guilty pleasure to a lot of people, Indians included to see the Pakistan Army being pushed to the extreme to ward off the resistance from inside the mosque. These guys used to fight the neighbour and now…something is wrong somewhere.

It has happened in the past and it will happen in the future. It’s quite simple actually.

What is the educated, intelligent, enlightened polity of Pakistan doing about the continuing lack of democracy in their country? Is it happy that they are ruled by despots all the time? Is it happy that its good to have these tyrants around – at least they have the guts and the guns to set history right. Take on the Indians across the border, infiltrate into their country, give refuge to people in their country who have committed serious crime in India. Is that what makes them tolerate these dictators?

And it is not just them in fact. Even the flagbearers of the war on terror the US of A is proud to have the Pakistan establishment lead the proceedings. They are frontline allies to restore the order of civil law and humane reason. What can one say?

Gandhi had once abandoned an all India movement when Indian protesters burnt and killed 20 old British soldiers during the non-coperation movement in 1919. The entire country was upset. An all India agitation on the verge of creating unbearable pressure that could have prompted the Britishers to quit the country died after Gandhi’s announcement. India got independence some 27 years later. Indians still hold many a grudge against the old man.

He said and I am only paraphrasing that when the root itself is poisoned imagine the tree and its fruits. Violence begets more violence. You can win the battle using violence, but then what?. You cannot give birth to peace using violence. As you sow so you reap he said in his own way. So let’s stop this protest, agitation, no matter how close we are to independence because it has got violent and corrupt and senseless, with anger driving it to further anger and destruction. Let’s stop he urged and he got killed.

And India and Pakistan moved on.

We have fought each other in one way or the other. And I don’t see how its going to end. I guess it’s time we remember as we sow so we reap.

It was like any other day. But.

In a dramatic gesture of protest a young, 22 year old, newly-married woman stripped to her undergarments and walked out of the house. She walked out of the house and into the rain that was battering the city. Shocked Indians had a dream come true. What they used to watch surreptitiously on tv and in magazines and foreign films suddenly materialized in front of their eyes on a rainy day.

They couldn’t believe their eyes. ‘Was the girl mad? No, the girl is mad. Why blame the in-laws, see how she didn’t blink an eye. She walked head held high and shoulders that didn’t droop. The in-laws must be right treating her the way she did. The girl must be a psycho or…’

The entire city and probably the country will debate this woman’s act for a couple of days before consigning her to the bin but the dramatic nature of protest quite simply shocked me and then humbled me.

Almost all of us are besieged by unbearable extraneous situations on a daily business. The apathy of the government, the disregard of loved one’s, the crude common milieu, the overbearing superior or the supercilious rich. On a good day almost all and everybody can drive one up against the wall. But what do we do. Do we protest? How do we protest?

Is individual protest in the 21^st century liable to make any difference? Will people hear us, see us, differentiate us from the crowd? These questions assail us from all quarters and then we let them go, compromise with the situation and move on. After all there is no time to stop, pause, think and rationalize, understand one’s anger, try to express the rage, not kill the angst but use it creatively to make sense of one’s life and fate.

No. It’s better if we just move on.

But this girl did a brave act. Nobody knows so far, at least I don’t why she did what she did? Her in-laws like many other in-laws are the primary cause. And so she took matter in her own hands and what did she do?

Was it an impulsive act? Will she regret this day in her later years? Does an impulsive act have to be inherently flawed, wrong? No. What she did was to assert her individuality, her womanhood by exposing herself completely to the gaze, both male and female. She asserts and denies her womanhood by the same action. Her protest is revolutionary.

She is a rebel. Long live the rebel.