It was shocking to watch yesterday how a youth from Gaziabath was killed, allegedly in a false encounter by the police. It grew murkier by every passing hour and by late evening every major news channel was covering it. If it hadn’t been for the TV channels, this would have turned into any one of those hundreds of encounters carried out by the police. None of the reporters were trying to carry out their own investigations and trying to take the law into their own hands, they were simply pointing out the loopholes — since most of the policemen are basically stupid (they are powerful, nonetheless), they couldn’t even concoct a proper story around the brutal murder.

Whatever was the reason and whatever was the motive, you just don’t pump 5 12 bullets into the chest of a person who is trying to run away. And anyway, policemen are instructed not to shoot above the abdomen unless under extreme circumstances. Another reporter said that the police had claimed there were two more friends of his that were absconding. The jungle (where the encounter took place) wasn’t being combed by the search parties and police dogs.

Anyway, the point is not whether he was guilty or not or whether the encounter was legitimate, everybody knows that crimes go unpunished in our country. 10s of encounters take place all over India everyday with no valid inquiry. In media the common man/woman finds a voice. If the police doesn’t file an FIR, or bullies a small businessman, they can approach a news channel and they’re are more than happy to highlight the transgression. Of course some go overboard, but it happens everywhere. Police goes overboard — criminals have a less fear of it than the common folks. Corrupt politicians have become folklore stuff.

The growth of news media is I think the best thing that has happened to India. Of course channels like NDTV and CNN-IBN mostly act like the Congress mouthpieces and it is often embarrassing to watch them, with more and more aggressive news media, it is increasingly becoming difficult for the powerful people to commit crimes and get away with them.

I don’t think there is much social opposition in India, and it was just due to laziness and nonchalance. We Indians are the epitome of the “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” attitude.

Personally I feel the ancient liberal sexual practices in India are way overrated but yes, we were already indulging in libidinous exercises of byzantine complexities while in other civilizations they were mostly doing the doggy sex behind the bushes. In fact we have had many androgynous gods having sex with themselves and in fact such tendencies were as normal as giving a peck of familiarity to a total stranger in a page-3 party.

So does it solve the harassment problem for gays and lesbians? Hardly. Harassing and annoying people is our cultural obsession and it has got nothing to do with your sexuality. In India you can be harassed for being a woman, a child, a disabled, a poor person, a person with no connections, a minority, a majority, a tourist, a dog, a cow, a buffaloe, I mean, you can be harassed just because you exist, even if you’re a stone. The local policeman will kick you in the butt even before you can utter “human rights”. So forget a harassment-free life. But yes, it’s a progressive step. Some blokes will challenge it in the Supreme Court, but there is a fat chance the apex dudes will reverse the judgment.

Of course protests will come from religious quarters. Take for instance this moronic outburst by the Sikh clergy:

A member of radical Sikh group Dal Khalsa said on condition of anonymity: “This day should be remembered as a ‘black day’ in the history of mankind. We are unable to understand that how our judiciary can push the whole humanity towards deterioration, just to make a handful of eccentric and wayward individuals happy.

I mean, a “black day”? So much shit happens around us, and they call this a “black day”? Anyway, this is just the beginning of religious looniness on this subject. Reactions from the mullahs and Bajrang dalis will be eagerly awaited.

But the article wrongly refers to the last Mughal as the “hero of the first war of Independence”. He was as clueless as anybody could get, and equally reluctant to get on the wrong side of the British. He was forced into an oblique leadership by mutineers desperately looking for a focus, and that time, restoring the glory of the Mughal empire became their focus. He totally went nuts when the British eventually captured him and dispatched him to Burma along with her queens, princes and concubines and kept him there on a meager monthly allowance.

I read William Dalrymple’s book on him a long time ago so I don’t remember whether his sons were sent to London or not. But if they were, after his death, it seems strange that his great-great-granddaughter ended up in the slums of Calcutta.

Illustrious or not, Bahadur Shah Zafar was the last emperor and it’s a pity that his descendants are living in penury. It tells a lot about our society. I don’t mean to say that just by the dint of belonging to a “royal” lineage we should confer titles and bounties on them but they should at least be rehabilitated and helped in order to provide them decent living conditions.

Some websites dedicated to extraterrestrial life and UFO have started urging people to brace up for an alien invasion. Of course, scientists and sewage experts say they are nothing but a colony of Tubifex worms. They often get together and form this blob and then display slimy movements when exposed to light and heat.

I wonder why people have such a bad notion of aliens. Why does a life form that can travel across galaxies have to end up in sewers and manifest such a repulsive biological existence? How did they travel? Did they use spaceships or simply hopped across dimensions and time coordinates? If this is the future of an intelligent existence — you gotta be highly evolved, spiritually, biologically and scientifically, to be able to travel and reach other living worlds — then this gives me shudders. Will we all turn into sewage-haunting blobs say, after a million years, if by any chance we don’t kill ourselves and the planet by that time?

Or may be the ability to travel in space is overrated simply because we cannot grasp it. May be it is so simple that even goo can travel through space.

Anyway, ever since then we’ve been using a small table that I used to use for my work, for the TV. Today I thought if we could shift the TV onto something else I could may be get my table back and this would give me the flexibility to work from the bedroom, or my workroom, without having to shift the bigger, workroom table, to the bedroom whenever it is too hot. This lead me to the idea of purchasing a flat-screen plasma TV that we can simply hang on the wall. Of course for that I’ll need to use my credit card and the card being on standing instruction, big chunks of money are deducted all of a sudden if I’ve been careless with the spendings. So I thought, if I can get the standing instruction canceled, I can do a big spending and then pay back gradually. Of course I’m doing no such thing.

But many people do. During the recession times when governments are trying to bail out big corporations and companies I’ve read many people complaining why they should pay for the stupidities of those who don’t know how to curb their spending addictions? In America millions of people took loans and never paid them back, whatever was the reason, and this has also happened in India. There is a reason why wise people say that you should spend discerningly. When people go overboard they tend to buy things they can’t really afford, and in most of the cases, they don’t even need them. For instance, we don’t really need a plasma TV and besides, the picture quality from the cable company cannot exploit the abilities of a plasma screen.

People buy big homes, big and multiple cars, expensive clothes, latest gadgets, and keep sinking themselves into the quagmire of debt. Even the companies selling these things encourage people to take loans and use credit cards. In malls they are ready to issue a credit card immediately so that you can use it to buy their stuff, and a majority of people do find such offers irresistible. When you are using a card instead of cash, you don’t even realize how much you are spending, and by the time you realize it, it is too late.

Once Alka and I had a long discussion on the rampant consumerism afflicting the society. She says I made fun of her during the discussion but I don’t remember that. Anyway, she staunchly dislikes the idea of buying things unless you really need them. I on the other hand, had a quite liberal view. My attitude was, why the hell should I bother if you want to spend your money buying stupid stuff? As long as I’m not doing it, you can burn your money and bury yourself in debt-grave for all I care. But this is wrong. Even if you’re not directly involved, if there is an ill in the society, everybody suffers, whether you’re part of that illness or not. This is the way the society functions, in fact the whole world functions. The current recession was caused due to people who wanted to own things without earning them. People who lived within means also got caught in this groundswell of excessive greed and indulgence.

It’s like pollution. It affects all of us, whether we actively pollute or not.

What do you intend to do about that?

Anyway, I was reading this blog on the banning of SavitaBhabhi.com, an Indian porn website, by the Indian government, under the IT act. According to an excerpt published in this ContentSutra update, N. Vijayaditya of the Controller of Certifying Authorities (a government agency under the Department of Information Technology)

There were several complaints against the site. We have taken action under the relevant sections of the IT Act and blocked the site.

The key here is “several complaints”. There might be 100s of, far worse porn websites in India, and they are operating openly, and the only difference is that people haven’t yet complained against them.

Does banning a porn website offend your freedom of expression?

I’m neither in favor of promoting porn nor against it. I’m not even neutral, in the sense that if you ask me right now to give a thumbs up or thumbs down to the porn Industry, it’ll be a thumbs down (and my opinion may change in the next 30 minutes) because after having visited every possible porn website in the world, it all seems quite boring (and most Indian “bhabhies” that are featured on these websites look like water buffaloes when they appear naked, and in fact some of them make you puke!).

Without going into the moral aspect, if porn is illegal then running a porn website is illegal too. I didn’t have much time to prob around; producing and distributing porn is illegal in India but accessing it is not. This is stupid because whenever there is demand, legal or illegal, supply is there. Although I’m 100% in favor of freedom of expression, if something is illegal, promoting it should also be. It’s like, rioting is illegal, and a website promoting people to indulge in rioting must be illegal too. The same goes for every illegal activity and its associated website.

When it comes to the Internet I think we’re overly emotional about “freedom of expression” and this in some way dents the credibility of the virtual world. Want to defend the right of porn website to operate? Fight to make porn legal in the country first. What do you think?

It was very late in this part of the world. Our daughter had gone to sleep at 10 PM and awakened at 1:30 AM. After a futile attempt that lasted almost 90 minutes (involving copious vacillations between hope and despair) I gave up the idea of forcing her to go back to sleep, switched off the alarm I had set on my phone and came to my room at around 3 in the morning, grumpily.

First there was a trickle of messages; many people claiming to have come across rumors of Michael Jackson’s death. Many denied it. Then people started posting links to the CNN website that said he was in the hospital after a coronary arrest. The TMZ website said that he was dead. After about 30 minutes, 95% of the messages I got talked about his death. The messages ranged from “Unbelievable”, “weird”, “shocking”, “devastating”, “RIP MJ” to “Child molesting psycho is dead”. In fact so many people expressed themselves after his death that this article says that when Michael Jackson died he almost took the Internet with him.

So yesterday when I was reading this blog post titled Why Do We Mourn Some and Not Others?, I thought about it too, and felt like sharing my thoughts. Why does this happen? As rightly depicted in the blog post, children are starving to death almost every minute. The post talks about the children in Africa, but a recent study concluded when it comes to hunger and malnutrition, India fairs worse than the most sub-Saharan, perpetually famished regions. So why does the death a Michael Jackson or a Farrah Fawcett move us more than the death of a street child or a child in a starving country? There surely are deaths that are far more tragic and painful than the deaths of celebrities who mostly die due to their own personal follies (most). Remember this Pulitzer-prize-winning photograph? The photographer committed suicide because he simply left the place after clicking the photograph, leaving the child at the mercy of the approaching vulture. When you saw this photograph (if you did) how much time did you spend trying to know about the background of the whole story (I’m not questioning you, lest you think I’m accusing or preaching)?

These days you can easily say that this is about media; media creates so much hype around a celebrity death that you don’t even realize that you are being sucked into a whirlpool of commiserations, remembrances, trivia and anecdotes by all and sundry. All of a sudden, every other living celebrity has sounbites regarding the departed celebrity. It’s a party of the herd-mentality too: all of a sudden everybody wants to talk about a particular event and wants to throw his or her two cents.

On social media websites, since everybody following you or being followed by you is talking about it you too want to feel like a part of the communication upheaval. You have to say something, and it can be anything. Take for instance this blog post; the blog post above sparked the idea of this blog post.

Celebrities like Michael Jackson become personal despite the seemingly unsurpassable mental and physical distance. You may have put up his posters in your room, danced to his songs, idealized him or tried to imitate his steps. Secretly or openly you may have wanted to become like him (minus getting the face all messed up, of course). You may have even had sex with him in your imagination. You may have even detested him for the various charges he was facing. So somewhere, consciously or subconsciously, people like him become personal, you seem to know them intimately, you talk about them as if you’re bosom buddies. Hence, their death jolts you and encourages you to talk about them, and their death. This is a personal shock, and talking about it, reading about it and hearing about it is very comforting. For once, you are not the only one who is suffering. You can experience common suffering during a natural calamity too, but then you cannot talk about it with equally suffering people from the comfort of your bedroom or drawing-room.

An unknown child who is dying of starvation, on the other hand, although equally, or rather more heart-rending, is distant from your personal space. You aspire to become a Michael Jackson, but you don’t aspire to become a hungry, dying child. You don’t put the hungry child’s posters in your bedroom, you don’t buy songs with an emaciated child on their cover. It is scary. It jolts the foundations of your hope. What you like about the celebrities and famous people is that they have the ability to move the masses, they can inspire millions and they can also inflict anguish upon millions (like your favorite cricket or baseball team losing the match). A dying, hungry child is a total antithesis of this powerful feeling. I’m not saying this is good, and I’m not even placing a judgment, but this is how our emotions work. You may want to feed that child, you may want to rehabilitate him or her, and you may devote your life to the amelioration of such children, but you certainly don’t aspire to be in his or her place.

So there’s nothing wrong in mourning the death of a celebrity. But don’t lose track of the actual world around you, don’t stop feeling a part of it. That hungry child may not motivate you to spend two hours in front of your TV or post copious messages on various social networking websites, he or she is as real as Michael Jackson, and just you as could have ended up being Michael Jackson, you could have also ended up being that child.

I’m just wondering, how difficult is it to resist the Devil? After dying, assuming, you either go to hell, or heaven, and when you sell your soul to the Devil, you certainly go to hell. That is an eternity of pain and torture, according to the information we have about hell.

The popular perception says that only the noblest, only the holiest among us get to go to heaven. Let’s say there’s a 99.99999999% chance of you going to hell and just 0.00000001% of going to heaven. You’re not going anywhere in terms of career and money, you don’t have a social life and there is a fat chance of you ever becoming rich, famous and loved. With this statistic, if the Devil comes to you and tells you that you can get whatever you want, for as long as you live on this earth, you can indulge in every kind of Bacchic pleasure you can think of and any conceivable sin, you are going to be the richest man or woman in the world and the people of the opposite sex (or the same sex) will satisfy your every possible sexual fantasy as if they were born to do just that and your loved ones will love you as nobody has ever been loved before, and in the history books you name is going to be written in golden letters, etc., and in return, the Devil is going to own your soul after you die. This means that you lose that 0.00000001% chance of going to heaven.

What are you going to do? Your choices are:

• Experience all worldly pleasures for as long as you live and then go to hell and experience pain for eternity.
• Live a miserable, non-happening life with a 99.99999999% chance of going to hell and experience pain for eternity.
• Live a miserable, non-happening life with a 0.00000001% chance of going to heaven.

Please share your thoughts. I’ll share mine in the next post.

I have very little knowledge on this subject. I remember I was in Ambala with my grandparents, and besides, my knowledge of Indian social and political history is quite limited.

It was surprising to discover (through this WikiPedia link) that the firstmost opposition to the imposition of the emergency came from the Shiromani Akali Dal, and perhaps that’s why the Congress developed such a strong disliking for the Sikhs (the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, for example). In fact the opposition was so strong that Indira Gandhi feared it would lead to a nationwide movement and tried to strike a deal with Sant Harchand Singh Longowal. I think this must be the reason why Indira Gandhi sent Bhindrawale to Punjab — to factionalize the Akali Dal.

Why did Indira Gandhi impose the emergency? What were the circumstances then? Again, I haven’t done much reading, but according to various sources on the Internet, the Allahabad High Court had declared her election null and void. The major goofup was that while she was acquitted of serious charges she was found guilty on the charge of misuse of government machinery for her election campaign, something that every politician in this country does naturally. One thing lead to another and on her advise, the then president, Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, declared the emergency.

Almost all opposition leaders were put behind bars. Journalists and editors were arrested and tortured. People were not allowed to protest. Some claim 100s of 1000s of people were operated upon forcibly to implement Sanjay Gandhi’s (I somehow agree with the drastic measure) birth control policy.

Anyway, if you have more information on this, please share it in the comment section and I will publish it here in the post.