peruvambians

Parched earth

2020-05-10T07:39:00.000-07:00

The evening sun slanted at the far west and smuggled its rays squirting into her room through the windows panes. Its dazzling golden flecks fanned and danced over the locks of sable black hair that it gleaned like an unflattering puce silk scarf.

Was it purple or muddy red?

Lena was overwhelmed with the crimson flakes that furtively gate crashed into her privacy. The horrid nightmare that devastated her, a couple of days back lay graphic before her eyes as a pictorial prose. She dithered, gumming the cud as it unceremoniously frequented her mouth with its soar taste, ever since she was back from the hospital cot. The sight of smokes, antibiotics and the stethoscopes, the aseptic smiles of the white-capped angels, the long white coats of the medics with their latex-gloves and hairnets and the sickening smell of iodoform and carbolic acid made her flesh crawl.

Lena gazed off in to space through the slid frame of the sash window. A batch of unruly and restless little tykes pranced and gamboled in the play park that lay sprawled behind the newly opened mall towering on the west of the motorway. Some flew dotted and bespeckled kites that soared and kept airborne for hours together over the town. She could only see the kites, not the fingers that slackened the strings. The mongrel dogs sniffled the air, whined and trembled like an incontinent patient. They gazed and bayed at the far-flying kites without any specific reason or plan or rhyme.

The ancestral pond that abuts the eastern hedge of the sprawling homestead has lost much of its historic grandeur and grace with the man-hewed laterite stones misaligned that looked like lichened boulders, ancient- like the feckless and dissolute gravestones in a time-aged cemetery. The pond once stood as a status symbol for the clan, now lay wasted and abandoned, full of mud and green slime. Children learned swimming, frolicked, rollicked splashed water on each other in its salad days. Now It is only a nebulous relic of the nostalgic past.

“In our idyllic childhood, we have seen our elders somersaulting and diving into the pristine clear water in the pond, swimming combats, holding breath longer in water- a real test for the lounge power. The bully’s kept the weak, their head pushed down in water for fun, akin to water boarding.”

Lena remembered her mother telling the aunt reminiscing her childhood days.

The pond wore a dissolute gloom with its banks dense with spiny hawthorns, shrubs, coppice, creepers and such other thorny plants and weeds. Now nobody came, young or old to the pond to swim, cavort or splash. No poolside frolics. Cattle rearing are no more a means to live. No cows come to drink water. Now all houses have posh toilets and bathrooms. White-breasted water- hens, plovers and cranes waddled freely in the pond to plough out the trout’s in the trance buried itself in the mud.

When the road was thin and the traffic less, women joined up at the turn of desk to wash and bathe in the pond. The shrubs and the bramble bushes that grew thick on the west end provided the wall that saved their modesty. The occasional workers retreating to their house after day long labor, the belly full of toddy they consumed nerved them to have the audaciousness to cast side-glances on the half naked caste women.

“Why would papa and mom behave like mongoose and snake?” They are the unlike polls, still they repel against the natural law that unlike polls attract. ‘You have lightened up my life’ has given way to ‘You have snuffed up my life’, though they have lived up their lives on their own volition.

Both of them were lured in taking credit for everything that turned out good. But both glaringly disowned and shifted failures on the other. It was like the clichéd metaphor “. Success is a sense of achievement; it is not an illegitimate child.”

“Life is a comic opera.” Lena mused below her breath.

The windows and the doors ajar, shut on the much sought after cool and enervating breeze in the scorching early-April-night. The gushy wind that followed slammed dunk and scored with ease on our windows. The summer rain may be on the pipeline to appease the plants and the animals. Finally it rained slutty and dishonest, like a tart who feign shy to move in to the cart of the cat dog.

As usual the clouds make the hue and cry but does not come down heavily.

It was a hot, torrid summer Sunday. The sun was beating down. Lena woke up and sauntered lonely in the compound for a while that restored her lost vigor. Wild plants and creepers flourished on the hedges even in the parching heat. Wild sprigs barbed with sharp thorns carried small flowers that added various hues to the natural garden. Rose trellises climbed the stones that are disorderly stacked up to work as walls to the garden. Clumps of bushes like blackthorn stood stern even in this summer, around the hedges. Thickets, bushy shrubs and spinney formed the hedgerows. The dry-stone compound walls and the shady copses and spinney’s punctuated the expanses of the plot.

Vishu is setting in. The spring is heralded by the full golden blossom of the Golden shower. In the local cant, this state flower is called “ Kanikkonna” which is also the national flower of Thailand.

Golden-Shower is a fast-growing tree which reaches 30 to 40 feet in height and 30 to 40 feet wide. The well-spaced branches are clothed with leaves. The leaflets grow up to eight inches long. These leaves wither fast and are quickly replaced by new leaves. In summer, Golden Shower is decorated with thick clusters of yellow blooms which cover the drooping branches. Dark brown, cylindrical seedpods hang on the tree throughout the winter before they fall on the ground. Its bark is used to make a concoction to reduce high blood pressure. The barks contain tannin and are used in leather industry. The pulp in the seed is an anti toxic against foot-worms. This year the flowers have withered by March-earlier than usual.

Keralites open their eyes to the Vishukkkani in the bell-metelled Uruli where the nature smiles, the Gods unite in the presence of lamps. Vishnu opens up a door to expectations of the New Year.

“Why do the golden shower bloom so early by Mai? By the time Vishu comes to the door, the whole leaves are withered.” Lena quizzed her auntie whom she called Mai.

“Global warming is the real villain. Scientists at the Jhon centre have discovered the reason why the first buds arrive earlier as the climate changes. Plants have an ideal temperature called ‘sweet spot temperature’ for seed set and flower at a particular time of the year. When the climate warms up early to reach to this sweat spot temperature, the plants recognize this and adjust their flowering time accordingly as if spring sets in earlier in the year. “

The auntie had her graduation in Botany.

“Have you seen butterflies of vivid hues in the garden yet,” The auntie asked with her squint-eye, the deceiving cornea directed to the garden, but actually set on Lena’s countenance.

Lena did not see the butterflies in the plot. By this time the garden used to be a riot of colors though.

Mai had her eyes now set to the garden with her face in an obtuse slant. She wore all-white pumps even inside the house as she belabored a pathologic pain in her perceived torment of being of less height. She carried always a steamy ‘wet look’ image. Strappy high-heeled sandals and fabulous glitter-encrusted stilettos never looked gorgeous even to a connoisseur in this temple town.

“Therein lies the crux. Butterflies and their host plants have a symbiotic relationship. The host plant provides its butterfly with food, a place to lay its eggs. In turn the butterfly pollinates the host plant. If a flower blooms early at its sweet spot temperature, the specific butterfly can arrive late. When its butterfly finally arrives, the flower will be past its blooming period. In some scenario, butterflies come out of hibernation earlier than their host flower blooms. Both are the losers and the victims of climate warming.”

The auntie hurried back as her mother called from inside the kitchen. The auntie assured her, “We will have detailed discussion later”

“A quick spray on the withering plants will be in order” She thought.

“Ma; they need an insect spray as well. Look at the spray of Orchids! Aren’t they fine Ma? I had the crop sprayer with me.” She turned to her mother wishful of an ardent admiration. The Ma smirked with a patronizing nod.

Lena returned back to her room.

Farther away from the road in the open area, the speckled cows grazed in the grassy grounds, often raising their heads staring at the pedestrians in a speculative trance. Children speared fishes lying swaddled in the mud of the drying ponds. The sky is overcast with grayish- dark clouds that drifted like wads of cotton wool. In the outskirts of the town, a circus group is dismantling the tents and equipment to move out to the next destination. Corny old Hindi songs from yester years are blaring out from the mikes securely strapped high on the masts.

Lena was dank with sweat. The anguish and fever tested her agility. The tea that is left on the table is now as cold as the moss-grown brinks in the river bank. She loathed looking at it. To alleviate the tyranny of boredom having been laid back close to a week now, she stood up and sashayed inside her room.

A smudgy soft-focused photograph in monochrome, of her grant parents in their youth is hung high on the wall. Grand pa stood upright behind with a single-breasted sack jacket having narrow notch lapels and highly polished shoes, with his wife seated in front on a spindle-legged chair, his masculine arms resting heavily on her shoulders. Lena felt that the Grandma had a little winkled-smile. Or it so appeared to her. She surmised, “It can be a swift thought that glided past her mind in a second, for an affected half-winked smile that got trapped at the exhortation in the click-moment when the photographer said, “say, and ‘cheese!’”

“The grandma with the classic polka dotted sari in the monochrome shade, fabulous with her heavy jewellery, looked glorious with cherubic cheeks-smart, confident, and independent individual contrary to what she was in real life.” Lena thought.

“Dress shabbily and they remember the dress; dress impeccably and they remember the woman.” She tried in vain to recollect whose quote that could be.

The Walnut finished Grandfather Clock that hung above the window on the head side of the bed struck half-past five. A clock symbolizes life and death. It also symbolizes endless love and jilted life. Miss Havisham in Great Expectations has all the clocks in her mansion frozen at precisely twenty minutes to nine – the time when she received the letter of rejection from her betrothed on her wedding day.

She touched her scalp where the nurses had wrapped the cloth. It still burned.

The images of the nightmarish incident came rushing in to her mind.

Lena with her school mate Haritha was out on an evening stroll into the country lanes they frequented.

“It is fast emerging into a modern sprawling town, in its grotesque urban sprawl, even the goons likely to sprout up with spraying guns.” Said Lena, reminiscing the metaphor from a novel she has just finished.

The by-pass that stretched to the railway station on the far west of the town up to the turnpike that preceded the fly-over, newly refurbished with pale yellowish color, slithered upwards from where it dissolved in to the main motorway that went to the Naval Academy, round the Railway station. In the night, the summit in the junction blazed in the sodium haze. The town-link road leading to her village has many a sub-lanes and alleys where the shops are thick set. The lanes were cluttered with residential buildings. The link-road runs in front of her house. The Perumba River that circumvents the municipal area serves as it border. The Shornur-Mangalore rail line that took sharp left, passes just 1/2 km south to her house. The rear side of the cluster of houses of her clan lay vast swathes of paddy fields. Lena and her friend were on shoot breezing on the country ride.

“I remember when we settled here being relocated from Ramanthali on the advent of the military academy; there were several pathways around through the fields. Human and animals left their spoors here. The whiff of animals and men filled the lanes and walkways. ” Haritha was nostalgic.

“When did your family settle here”? Lena asked.

“Hardly a decade back, I had my LKG here. You came here last year vacation. No?” Haritha was joyous.

“Yah; before that, we were at Parappa, a nondescript hamlet in Kanhangad, the only bigger town in our vicinity. We relocated here as part of the ancestral property division in which my Mom got the homestead as her share after adequately addressing her brothers dues. My grandpa died a couple of years back and the grandma expired a year before him. My dad is a professor in Physics in the Govt College at Kasaragod.”Lena replied.

The crooked country roads and the narrow lanes are the sacrosanct spaces of solitude. These pathways, by all means, belong to villages. Pathways are the veins and nerves integral with the village that is bounded with the hillocks, streams, fields and bays. In the countryside, the Byzantine line-like walkways, the alleys, trails, causeways, pavements-all meet and lead to a unique but different tiny habitats carrying bizarre names known only to the dwellers there. They then accumulate, would flow to a common tiny town collecting the sediments like the rivers to the sea. These local lanes lay cool so much so, at times untraceable and secluded. Pagoda flower creepers, Karaveerakam, hibiscus, paper-flower limber and the wreathed trellis with buds and bells make nice outer-hedges to these alleyways. Thickets, bushes, the wild vines, flower vines and trailing plants straddled them, lined on both sides. Flocks of tiny finches and barn-swallows zoomed and swooped to graze in the sallow fields. In summer the plants brought coolness, in wintry months, they brought warmth- supplanting the seasonal opposites.

Lena thought of Parappa her last home village and said: ““The monsoons that gushed down the slippery slopes in obstreperous wildness are a horrid nostalgia. The roads turn murky with the water that pours on the hills, gashing down the slopes. The walks in the rain-drenched uniforms, splashing muddy water with the toes are distant dreams now.”

Lena looked at her friend. “I had a friend who was more an elder sister there. Anjali sister had a faint likeness with you. She went back to Calicut on transfer with her husband.”

“The village pathways are destined to give a perfect layout to the snakes for their war-fronts. The snakes fought ferociously, entwined lasciviously in their procreation urgency. They provided the congenial stage for the furtive rustic romances of the naive adolescents, of love and insanity, stupid delights and suicides.” Haritha chuckled.

“I don’t know about you, but snakes give me the willies. Lena laughed. “’How many smackaroos, how many kisses and how many scathing drops of jilted love would have melted and parted like ice in these lanes- untold and unsung.”

She looked at the forlorn alleys as far her sight would fetch and sighed.

“The alleys and pathways near the town have metamorphosed into residential lanes. The solid runways lay sandwiched by concrete jungles on both sides. The urban sprawl into this countryside is alarming. Kerala seems to have no villages. ”

Abruptly Haritha poised a Shakespearian question. “You are to me what Anna, Dido’s sister, was to the Queen of Carthage,” Didn’t you have an affair, Yet!”

Lena fell into a brooded silence. She felt a pang deep in the recess of her heart.

“We are too young for that kind of a thing. No?”She laughed.

Huge billows of thick black smokes from the smoky chimneys of the tile factory on the banks of the slim Olavara river rose high on the western horizon drawing grotesque figurines on the sky. The Perumba river when it reaches the west of the town takes the name Olavara River.

It was getting dark.

“The smallish road that runs to the town will soon be emptied. People of slender means hurried to reach their huts. We must fast pedal. “ Haritha announced in a hurry.

“A dusky sky is gloomy, grotesque and gothic as in vampire stories. The Pine Trees soften the outlines of the houses. The sunset is a stunning spectacle. Mom will be up her steams if I be late.” Lena was trembling.

The sun had slipped behind the copse of trees just beyond the toll gate. The desk had fallen. The west wind spattered the whiff of the river to their nostrils. Children on the other bank reveled splashing the briny water on each, challenging themselves on how many minutes they can keep under water. They heard the mothers calling them by names and it is the first warning whistle for the urchins to return.

Lena said, “The wind shepherds the cloud from west to eastwards. When you see rain clouds in the east, it means the rain is at your steps.”

Haritha nodded affirmatively. “It wouldn’t wait. It would pour accompanying the winds. When the rain drops fall, it will be like silver plates lined up.”

The sallow street-lamps stood as cocky-eyed sentinels on the road with their heads slouched under the load of dark sky. Prostitutes solicited openly in the shady lanes in the streets. The packed shops are now getting emptied. The silhouette of the faceless high rise apartments near the ply factory in the emerging town rose above like towering ghosts. The kerb-crawlers drove slowly in the night looking for street tarts. The Thattukada, The grotty little eatery on the road side, the male dominated space that remain open from desk to morning would have begun to serve hot porotta, fish, chicken fry, omelets, thattu dosha, fried items, the cheap and best food.

Lena stayed sided for the funeral procession to pass. It is already sun down and within seconds the darkness would climax in to pitch dark. A snake coiled up on the grass, slithered away into the bushes. Her skirt caught on the thorny bush. She was worried and was spooked by the strange noises. Somehow she reached to the pathway to her house. A sigh of relief escaped her throats.

Suddenly Lena felt a wreath-like presence before her. A stout hirsute apparition skulked behind in the dark trellis. A heavy hulking figure towered high above her in the dim light.

“Who is out there?” Sensing harm, she tried to call out in full throat. The trees looked goofy in the half-light of dawn.

Her voice was muffled by fear. She was scarred and numbed. Instantly the big palms of the beast caught up her mouth and dragged her slender body towards the spinney trees. Snuffles of her Laddy, her pet dog was audible in the bushes but it kept docile. She gritted her teeth against pain. Invoking divine intervention, she tried to scream but it came out like whimper, smothered halfway. She writhed in pain. Upon sensing his master in trouble, the dog barked loudly and repeatedly, but withdrew from wrestling with the beast.

Lights turned on. The predator slacked its palms in an involuntarily moment. As a reflex action, she caught the loosened hands and bit with full strength and fury. Her teeth gashed deep through the hirsute forearm of the beast and went through the procedure at least thrice. She made a loud cry and the hand was released. The beast’s guttural in pain was audible. With heavy hands it struck hard on her head. She went reeling and could hear fading but hurried food steps leaving away from her. She heard loud clumps and thudding of feet running down the stairwell of the house and of many feet running towards her. The beast vaulted over the fence and was quick in its step towards the town. She keeled over and lay unconscious in the heap of fallen leaves amidst the thorny bushes and shrubs. Blood spurted from her nose.

She knew it was a man. Far away in the distance a bike hummed and rode away in haste. Was he making a pass at me?

Human being are like earth that is to be dug deep to unearth the intricacies of its heart. One cannot fathom the hidden wonders and tragedies looking from above.

It was late-May. The summer rains are far overdue and is most welcome. Happily a shower and the spattering of raindrops on the roof have begun. Lena was tired and out of sorts when she reached home, back from the hospital in the evening. She lay spread eagled on the sofa out of sentimental pain being stumbled and sprained an ankle in the tussle, with a bandage in place which gave her sporadic pain when strained. Down in the dumps, she sprawled in the armchair as she was spuriously tired. The TV in front blurt out the skewed Govt channels and the ads of the burgeoning corporate in its full flair.

Stephen reached home late, wringing wet. “The rain is earlier than its schedule. “ He murmured in monotone.

“You are soaked through, soaked to the skin. Come in and dry off. You are sure to sniff throughout the night and let nobody sleep. This is the first rain in the summer-Sure to get cold.” Lekha was anxious more of the havoc he would create on the likely sniff and snores in her room.

“Give the clothes a good sock before you wash them “ Lekha reeled out at her in-law looking towards the kitchen.

Stephan was having the sniffles. Lekha was in full spate and snipped back.

Lena twirled in pain.

“Well, at least you weren’t hurt. The streets are abuzz with freaks and weardo’s at desk. Beware when you go out? I suppose we should be grateful for small mercies. Sob your heart out”.

The mother said with an insouciant shrug and strutted towards the kitchen.

“Was there a taunt or a squib at her father in that? “Lena asked herself and stared at the sodden grass in the dark garden through the window.

“There is no need to worry.” Stephan solaced his daughter, putting his specs in the spectacle case.

“You must try and keep your spirits. Show a little fighting spirit.” said her father.

“Ok. I will try” She replied with a faraway look.

“That is the spirit” Her father patted her on the shoulder.

Lena felt totally spent, her appetite gone but slept soundly as a bell.

Stephan put on his usual grey shirt and the loose and broody cotton slacks. Lekha still in the kitchen wearing a shapeless cotton apron- smock tainted with smudges of kitchen dirt.

The kitchen hearth smoked badly.

Lekha was rough and sullen. She was Choleric, jumpy, frothing-at-the-mouth.

“The vampire slag; the slapper” Stephen spit out in his fury without assigning much a meaning to the spelt out words partly as a soliloquy and partly heard out, not in a critical way but in unison with the mood that commanded the moment. He wouldn’t slag his wife off that often.

In the swanky bed room he gently sloshed double amber rum on the rocks of ice toasted to the health of his wife, under the cloud of cigar-smoke. He swilled two drinks to slake his anguish. As someone said, anguish starts as a slow burn and accentuates rapidly in to a bonfire. Slowly but definitely it should swell into a conflagration. One has to slum it for the family.

Stephan has lost his spryness and has reduced mobility over a “fake accident” which he seldom feigned to be forgetful, created by his wife’s family early in their life. Ever since the accident, the whole brunt of the presence of foreign body implanted inside his right limb gave him a visible slant to the left and its nasty sporadic pains too. To make matters worse he had a bad disc prolapsed that greatly diminished his mobility added on by the chronic gripe and insomnia. The year’s bygone has healed him almost completely, but the emotional gruffness stuck with him. Scar tissues and the extra bone growth in his knee, which restricted his agility, had remained with him ever.

The auntie had an exceptional skill in steering a middle course between the two extremes. The couple felt it a consolation though privately. But the audacity to broker peace was vehemently fought in open. The auntie worried stiff, glanced at him and waived her head sideways that portended a caution to watch his steps. That was the body kinesics of a caring sister-as she knew that her sibling was fatally vulnerable to prolonged verbal duels with his wife.

“Not a dog’s chance for the horny and mawkishly self-righteous women to self-correct”. He pitied with his wife in derision and struck his flag. Stephan did not want to stick around and rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands and legs, flounced off in a huff and stomped up the stairs to his room. He felt a sharp pain in the small of his back, took a couple of painkillers hoping to sleep the pain off. He sank to his bed; reached for the ear-dogged novel and started from where he left off leaving Lekha to stew her own juice.

*****

Professor Panikker, the head of the department of English, knocking at fifty five was a man of distinct features with a hatchet face sporting a grizzled hair with penthouse eyebrow-jutting majestically. Stephan considered the senior as a stick to crutch on and a mentor.

“If I were you, I wouldn’t allow her to slap me around like the way she does to you.” Professor Devasya, from the Mathematics Department interjected, combing the last left out swatches of his long hair meant to mask the bald patches across the scalp which ones would have been a dense forest of hair.

Panikker cast a sharp look at Devassya in certitude of disfavor on the faux pose. Stephan’s eyes narrowed in the slits. His head slouched against the wall-slumped and exhausted.

“She is a froward and high-strung, pushy and domineering as any frustrated battle-axe would be. Names like battle-axe, shrew is sexist though.” Panikker was prophetic.

“There is a proverb in the bible. Better to live on the corner of a roof
than to share a house with a nagging wife.” Professor Devasya who has no qualms to engage with the students insane frat parties, intervened.

Panikker added with his chronic smile, “No! If she seems fierce, it’s for a reason. Katherine the shrew! That’s the worst thing you can call a young woman.”

“Every eal think it is a whale.” Devassya shrugged and spat in disgust. His unprepossessing appearance with his short nasals and beady eyes went hot and red.

Stephan said; “She loves me madly. She dropped out in the final physics degree classes just to live her life with me. She didn’t even attempt later, not just because it was difficult to do practicals. She even didn’t apply for PSC exams to take care of the family. I had to struggle to convince her on the primacy of having a degree which she did after 2 years“

“Do you know, in the middle ages, the corporal punishment for the gossipers and shrews were harsh. They were fixed with the branks bridle also called scold bridle. This was an iron muzzle enclosed in an iron framework that surrounded the head of an accused woman, like a mask. The bridle-bit was put in the women’s mouth and pressed upon the tongue. Often a bell is attached and the accused were driven through the cities.” Panikker held out his knowledge of history.”This unpleasant iron instrument, with its twisted animal horns, was used to hurt and humiliate ‘scolds’ who were thought of as too rude or unruly.”

“When would you say a woman is shrew?” Panikker, the intense intellectual continued. “A woman is a shrew when the venom she spews unsettles her man, or when her attitude and words cause him hard-pressed. Shrew-like disposition becomes a habit. Left alone, it can be a spoilsport in any relationship. Many a self-righteous women are unconcerned about the toxins that spewed from their lips”

Once upon a time Martians and Venusians met, fell in love, and had happy relationships together because they respected and accepted their differences. Then they came to Earth and amnesia set in: they forgot they were from different planets.

Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is a practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relation, written by John Gray.

When a woman loves a man she feels responsible to nurture him, assist him to improve the way he does things. He becomes her primary focus and her reason de etre. No matter how much he resists her help, she persists. The most frequently aired complaint, women have about men is that they don't listen. Either a man completely ignores her or when he actually does, he is quick to offer a solution donning the mantle of a Mr.Fix- it cap and begins sermonizing. He is all in nerves when she doesn't appreciate this gesture of love. What men have about women is that they are always trying to control them. Men are more interested in "objects" and "things" rather than in people and feelings, while women fantasize about romance. Proving one's competence is not as important to the Venusians, offering help is not offensive, and asking for help is not a sign of weakness for them.

“Do you know how would others take it; when women happened to walk in front of her husband?” Panikker was pensive. “We take it as a gross breach of etiquette. Interestingly fellow women are the main critics of their own species.”

It was time to disburse to their class rooms. Students were coming in. More teachers appeared in the teacher’s room of the English department. They retired with the word that they will meet in the afternoon interval.

In the afternoon they met again under the mango tree on the eastern end of the botanical garden. The green lawns, garden and other plants mainlined in the biodiversity park have enhanced the beauty of the campus. From there they could behold the majestic Bronze Lamp in the entrance shining in grace.

Mangoes are scarce in the season.3 sentences.

“We tend to stereotype women and regard them as showing lack of confidence. Psychologists say that the argument that men and women speak differently is based on the “androcentric” assumption that men’s speech is normal and desirable. By not fitting in men’s speech patterns, women become deficient.”

Professor Panikker started from where he stopped.

A woman who wanted her man to help with a household chore, because she was afraid of being a shrew, asks for it interestedly. The man now believes there is no urgency and think he will do it at some time later. The woman then gets burst out. Now she feels like she’s become that nagging wife and her behavior only reinforces the image. As a result, her self-image becomes tarnished and ends up doing the chore herself, feeling both resentful of him and disgusted with herself. If you assert yourself too directly, your requests will be ignored because you are perceived as bossy. However, if you let your voice go too low you run the risk of not being taken seriously.

“By using the derogatory term “nag,” a man trivializes the woman’s request. By resisting her efforts to mold him to her will, the man can look as if he’s in control.”

It was muzzling steadily. They ran to the cover of deep eaves of the hipped and gabled roof of the canteen.

“Insubordinate and mercurial women are to be coaxed, cajoled and if not mend their ways, should be punished with severe bastinado even toe wedging, strappado or rack as being done in medieval inquisitions” Said Professor Devsya strutting his dad bod proudly.

Panikker was visibly vexed and annoyed. He asked the Mathes professor.

“Did you read Shakespeare’s “The taming of the shrew”

“ Yes, during my college years, in the 2^nd year of graduation, it was a play we were taught in the English classes. But I do not remember a thing or two of it except a vague idea of the plot.”

“I am sorry. The taming of the screw is not taught in our universities.” The Mathes professor was a bit narky, but did not make any objections. Prof: Panikker continued.

“Unfortunately, the stereotype of the nagging wife is not going to go away quickly, it is well-entrenched in the social-psyche, having been handed down after centuries of characterization in literature and myth.” Professor Panikker looked at them.

“Petruchio, the husband transforms the feisty, froward and openianated Katherine the shrew who rebels against all stereotypes in to a quiet, benevolent and obedient role of the traditional wife. In the process, he subjects her to mental anguish, frustrations and even physical intimidation. On the wedding day, he humiliates her by appearing in shabby attire and then cause physical abuse by making her horse to dump her in to the mud. In the feminine space, he employs asceticism common to monasteries. Katherine is isolated from others, denied food and sleep to starve her in to submission. Throughout the play, Katherine is abused, insulted and denigrated by various male character’s for her stubborn ways.”

“She ate no meat today, nor shall none eat//Last night she slept not, nor tonight she shall not” Professor Devasya expounded his erudition.” So shaming in public is the taming tool to civilize women.”

” Petruchio even declares publicly that “I am he am born to tame you, Kate,” Professor Panikker was sober and continued.”He employs the language of animal domestication by calling her a “wild Kate”—a pun on “wildcat”—that he will tame.”

“Petruchio orders her to say that the sun is really the moon. Katherine relents and declares that, Petruchio might as well define reality for her from this point forward. TKatherine the shrew now declares the husbands as their lords, kings, and governors. She says that a woman’s husband protects her and supports her, living a life of danger and responsibility while the woman is “warm at home, secure and safe.” The husband seek only ‘kindness and obedience, which is only a small return for “so great a debt.” A wife is a subject for whom her husband is a prince. A woman proves a traitor if she behaves like a virago. Women should yield to her men. She should understand that “our lances are but straws.” A woman should even kneel before her husband and hold his foot. A U-turn from her initial forward, peevish and sour disposition.”

The professor grasped his breath. Looked at them reading their mind, he said;
“The play spills with misogyny, but it only unravel the fallacy of the oppressive male-dominance. The attitude is entrenched.”

Stephan is a highly courtly, home-loving and uxorious husband. He adores his wife. “I do not want her to revere me and treat me like the Christ in the house. I do not want my wife to be a servant”

“Emperors or commoners; men are henpecked. They are husbands tied to the apron strings of their wives. The wives dominance can be ascribed to the excessive devotion or the self-effacement on the part of the husband. He is held as captive and domesticated animal. Submissiveness, sweetness, serenity are the feminine traits while courage, decisiveness and competitiveness are attributes of men”. Devassya flapped his wings like an ego-driven philosopher and a cold fish, his gravelling voice rose above the others.

Panikker was furious. He coughed up a mouthful of phlegm, rolled it in the mouth and spat violently towards the bush. “Mince your words. Yes, We all have loads of mumps mouse with us. It is highly impertinent and brutal to keep such opinion in this century. You are making a homegrown mossback on yourself. I took Shakespeare just to tell you that such is the misogynistic attitude of our men over the centuries.” He continued. “In the council of Macon, forty-three Catholic bishops and twenty men representing other bishops, held a most peculiar debate In the year 584 CE at Lyons in France. The debate was "Are Women Human?" After the marathon debate, a vote was taken. The results were alas: thirty-two, yes; thirty-one, no! Women were declared human by just one vote! “

Socrates is often credited with the quote:“By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher.” Said the Mathes professor.

Stephan knew that the snide and catty remarks from Devassya was aimed at him but he ignored them in disdain and kept silent.

Finally he said mournfully; “Her father tortured her for months together, locked her inside a Yoga centre, mentally and physically harassed her, but she stuck to my wish. The staff at the centre subjected her to ruthless ‘counseling’ extending for weeks, asking her to have a break up or convince me to embrace Hinduism. A divorce was far from her mind.”

Panikker heard him attentively.

“We have no regrets. We are tolerant of each other’s beliefs; we live together, practicing different religions. My daughter prays at the church. She visits the temple with her mother too. Above all my terrible shop worn jokes could still crease her up! “.

Beneath the veil of his gruff exterior he was weltering in pain and anguish. Panikker twitched a cigarette from the Wills packet and extended to other men and they smoked. They called themselves ‘smoke cohorts’.

“Tell me; had there been anything in your life that made her think that you had been cheating her?” can you imagine any such incident in your life that should ignite her wrath?” Panikker asked him softly, caressing his neatly trimmed goatee. His thick and overhanging penthouse brows shivered in the breeze.

Stephan breathed pensively for a while ransacking his inner mind.” I don’t remember exactly. Let me think.” He replied.

***

Stephen is now working at Maharaja’s college, Cochin, located at the heart of the blooming cosmopolitan in Kerala. They stayed in a rented flat at Kakkanad, an upscale suburban neighborhood of Ernakulam, a city of large transient population. It was a poky apartment with very little storage space. The open-plan bed room space was small with a small bathroom en suite, a kitchen of equal size and a small prayer room and the store room half the size of the bed room was all the luxury. A wall bed pulled down from the wardrob in the store space acts as a space-saver and is used by the small girl. Her vast lego collection of mountain modes, skyscrapers are stuffed inside the drawer. A blinder parts the room to accommodate a strategically placed sofa and two chairs to mask the kitchen view from the visitors. Books are squeezed in the storage of the divan bed with neat bedspreads. The binder makes the room a spacious feel. They were happy that Instead of lots of different rooms it has one multifunctional space. The large window with the multiple silts opened to the traffic beneath. The common balcony went round the new gaff. It was quaint and unfashionable like old settlers cottages.

Lekha drudged in the household chores alone fighting every advance from Stephen to help her. She cleared the tables ,did the dishes alone. Lekha, true to be the image of a vintage housewife of typical suburban middle class, got up at the first cockcrow, did the dishes after every meal, cleaned the countertops, appliances and vacuumed the high-foot-traffic areas in the house, did the laundry, replaced bed sheets, mopped the floor, scrubbed the bathroom, toilet seat and bowl. She rousted the lazy snoozers with steamy and piping hot cups of tea. She had a well prepared schedule, splitting down the chores in to daily, weekly and monthly tasks to leave the kitchen uncluttered.

She sent him to the college with a tiffin for the noon. However hard he dissuaded her not to struggle for the dinner preparation as the meals at the canteen are too cheap and affordable, she would not agree. The Tiffin was too clumsy to fill his hand bag to carry in the crowded busses. He often fell living game for others pulling pranks on him, making him ashamed. He knew she was too pertinacious out of her love for him.

“It is not just a cup of rice and a veg curry. It is the manifestation of my love and care”- and he always succumbed. There was no other way-out than to surrender.

"If you specify that rooms have got to be bigger, then you will drive the price up," The broker furrowed his brows when complained of the lack of space. Even the tiny flat cost dearly from the pay.

Happily living in a small home is first of all about psychology, says Hannah Booth, homes editor at Guardian Weekend. "You can live without much more than you think."

Stephan asked her whether she was displeased with the inconvenience of the place, she had no qualms.

“We don’t have that kind of cash to splash with. You know that a home is not a stage where you perform your life for the visitors. There are oodles of space in the kitchen. I am OK.” She reassured him.

“OK” He said extremely admiring his wives frugality. "We had always been frugal. What if we were extremely frugal?'"

Stephan is already late now. He has an additional preoccupation as an NCC officer for the sake of a modest honorarium that fetched an add-on to his pay. Stephan kissed his beautiful wife and the kid as he regarded her shape and curves and her slowly protruding bellies.

“You are going to be a papa again.” Only a couple of weeks back Lekha has announced in his ear that she has a bun in the oven.

“Pregnancy has more thrills than spills. It is exalting and scary too – it’s a rollercoaster of emotions for the women as her body undergoes dramatic changes owing to a wild play of a cocktail of hormones. Every pregnancy is a new experience. “Her doctor told her with a side glance at Jacob.” She is in her 1^st semester.”

Stephan readied himself and within an hour, not waiting for the elevator ran clumsily past the downstairs. He called out his wife reminding her to take the child to the Kindergarten as he is busy. The Yezdi waited patiently in the garage. Without looking at it, he limped past the main gate and hurriedly squeezed through the ruck and dissolved in the crowd that seethed the park bus stand, a good km away from his apartment.

The leafy town lay before her like a frumpy women eagle spread with the long hairs in all directions-the town in perpetual turbulence. Lena looked down from the window-sill. A small traffic tie-up in the early morning caused by the early commuters to colleges, sales boys and the professionals- an assortment of men and women in various hues.

As a god fearing Hindu-Nair women, Lekha slept on his left, stirred early in the cold light of the day, before sun rise and as a reverential ritual touched his feet with both her hands while he is still in bed and daubed her eyes.

In Indian philosophy husband and wife are thought of as two wheels of same chariot of the universe. Followers of (Krishna Yajur Veda) the wife is expected to be on the left of the man on all formal occasions. During the household affairs and sex, the wife is seated left to the husband as she is Vamangi means left. As per tradition, a Brahmin wife stands on the right side. In Kshatriyas she stands on left side. In the pictures of Rama and Sita, Sita always holds left to him.

Lekha had a fetish for hygienic habits. She gave a pedicure to her feet every month. She cleaned her lady parts, avoiding douches and soap and kept dry using cotton panties. As usual she went to the kitchen after a thorough bath unfailingly in the morning with the obstinate cowlicks on the forehead. She kept the radio tuned to the Prayer songs from Akashvani, made strong wake-up coffee and called them to get out of bed. It was an arduous routine to run behind the lazy kid to make her brush and bathe.

“Lekha appeared in the staff room during the third hour. She was on her way back after dropping the preschooler off at the school gate and seeing the child amble to her class room. When she showed herself at teacher’s room, I was refurbishing the portions to be taught in the pre-degree classes. Maya, the other physics lecturer was also at her seat placed close to his desk. As the room was cramped, no distinct separation except for one to enter was left between the tables.” Stephan spoke slowly

They were the only lecturers left in the room.

Maya had her fan-shaped nails manicured with delicate pastel pink that glazed her nimble fingers. A dainty handkerchief lay smothered in her delicate palms. She laughed generously with her perfectly immaculate teeth. A pea-sized but jagged mole rested as a black stud on her nose. With all the embellishments, she resembled the desolate driftwood that one’s danged in the fresh winds adoring the spiffy trunk of an oak. Maya has undergone the standard hysterectomy for removing the painful fibroids that chewed away all spices of her femininity. The gynecological surgery has removed her valuable objects both the uterus and the cervix and has pitched her to early menopause. Maya was also required to undergo the pelvic organ prolapsed surgery. She is slowly regaining the vitality from the psychiatric morbidity that clung with her for quite some time. The old briskness and elegance that charmed her colleagues has whittled away and she appeared as the ghost of her earlier self.

Panikker remarked with a philosophic touch. ”The menstrual cycle is the tears of bloodshed by the woman’s womb at the bereavement or loss felt at the ovum not being fertilized by the sperm to create an embryo. Creation of life, and its related sexuality are the domain of the woman. Hysterectomy is removal of the womb with all these related functions that it serves.”

Maya stood near him. She leaned close to Stephan’s shoulders and was trying to help solve a knotty problem in Thermodynamics. The musky, tantalizing fragrance of Revlon Charlie Red emanated from her arm-pits embarrassed him. The bodacious scent was ravishing. Her voice was tender but seemingly flirtatious. Her faint and spasmodic breaths fell on his shoulders. She softly whispered, “You are really the Cupid. I really love you!” The last part was a bit louder.

She was about to plant a kiss on his cheeks when Lekha made her appearance at the door. Lekha was stunned and visibly unhappy over the scene. The spectacle sent chills down her spines. She expressed her displeasure vociferously and stomped down the steps screaming muffled imprecations and stormed past with glowing eyes at him.

Both Maya and Stephan were in utter disarray and stood transfixed. Stephan felt ashamed.

They did not talk the rest of the day being blanketed in anger, fear, and rage and self-blame.

“Back home I was cautious to speak to her, tried everything to pacify her. But she behaved as though she is unbothered and withdrew into sullen silence. In the bed she laid passive before me as an outsider.” Panikker heard him sympathetically. Stephan sighed.

“ No I keep my conduct with my colleagues at professional level. Nothing has swayed me in my life. Nothing could make me infidel. That is for sure” Stephan told her.

“I can’t take all that you say without a pile of grains of salt. You old crappy liar!” She put both hands on her ears, her voice quavered with rage as if not bothered to hear any excuses.

“Be reasonable. It is a myth that all professional bonds are affairs just about sex. It’s also a myth that all affairs are just about unmet emotional urgencies.” He wanted to console her.

“You are too tired of this domestic life. I am too vanilla. You want to venture out. I know!” She told him in the bed.

“It is the way of all male flesh. Every men drop their drawers once away from home. If I wanted monogamy, I should better marry a swan. The infidelity is not necessarily in the sex, but in the dishonesty. It galls me! If that’s what you two enjoy, that’s perfectly fine! You are free. But don’t lie for gods sake!“

“Imagine how free, relieved and happy you would be, if you could stay calm and poised in the midst of whatever is happening in your life. Think how much physical, emotional and mental energy you could spare, if you were able to avoid being upset, angry or moody.” Stephan sighed.

“ But, you were in with every bone in my body. Every beat of my heart was for you. It wasn't perfect, but I know for sure that I loved you in every inch of my soul, with everything I had; I loved in such a way that your happiness was always mine. And I'm thankful for that too.”

Life is like a journey in a crowded train, you meet at some station. The passenger board out at another station, the other continuing the journey as he has to.

She feigned indifference, more like Stepford wife, impassioned and immobilized robotic-docile, fawning and submissive.

Lekha rose at the wee hours as usual. After the morning toilette attended her morning orison in the prey room, visited the neighborhood temple collecting rose petals, jasmine, marigold, camphor and incense sticks in a copper bowl as if nothing untoward happened in her life.

“Ayurveda says that water in copper vessel balances all the three Doshas in the body, by positively charging the water. The thulasi water is a remedy for sore throats, Fever, Common Cold, Coughs, Respiratory Disorder, formation of Kidney Stone and the like. It is a heeler of mental strife also.” At once Panikker felt ashamed thinking that it has been a tactless utterance at the wrong time.

Lekha did the Pradakshana or perambulation around the sanctorum, the inner most chamber of temple where the deity resides, in clockwise direction for nine times. The idol inside the Garbhagriha(sanctum sanctorium) absorbs all the energy from the bell sound, camphor heat and vibrates the positive energy within the Garbhagriha. On the forehead, between the two eyebrows, is a spot that is considered as a major nerve point in human body since ancient times. The red ‘kumkum’ between the eyebrows retains-the energy in the human body and control the various levels of concentration. This also facilitates the blood supply to the face muscles. Coconut and Banana, the only fruits in this world considered to be “Sacred fruits” have an important place in all religious activities.

She felt a lot better – mentally, emotionally and physically. She began more and more religious. She bustled around the kitchen, hustled to make breakfast and relished the family as that rendered her the emotional tranquility.

“But an ocean seethed inwardly. The silent rage wrapped in the stoic resignation was frightening.” Stephan muttered in muted tone.

She patiently made the kids hair, braided low in to a pony tail in a school-ready style. Some days she adorned her hair in a lower bun with silver hoops and clips. Some other times Lekha threw her hair into a polished, but slightly messy topknot. The kid looked a little more sophisticated. Occasionally she took the pigtails to the exalted level with a super sleek pair like Brooklyn Prince. As an add-on she wrapped one tail around elastic. Gold hair elastics like Eris Baker doubled the charm. She created trendy tails with the kid’s hair-the adventures did leave the kid happy. The experiments on the kid gave her immense solace. She dropped Lena in the Kinder Garten. Lena’ teachers were happy to receive her at the gate.

She did all these in a vengeful catharsis of her fury. Stephan used to leave Lena in the play-school on his way to college except in those week days when he has the NCC session. Lekha took her back in the afternoon. Now Lekha insisted that she would help her on all days with a pretext that she is alone having nothing to do fruitful in the leisure times.

“Lena’s Mom looks gorgeous.” The doll-like Miss at the Kindergarten exclaimed. The girl had a voice that chimed like music in the summer breeze. Willowy and with reduced bust, she exuded an aura of charm and sprightliness. Ruddy tints on the cheeks jutted out loud in her whitish complexion. Dolly wore a full sleeved shalvar kameez, long up to her toe and fully covered from back neck line that at once suggested that she is a Kashmiri origin.

Lekha gave her a once over. She could not direct her eyes away from the chiseled face and sculpted body of the girl, sylph-like in flesh-toned ballet shoes that made her legs look longer. Dolly wore a nude-colored tulle around her head. Dolly was done-up with her glossy and well-coiffed locks with dark mascara, eye shadow, eye-liner and blush. She adored a nude lip-gloss. Lekha guessed it was most watchable. Speaking to her seemed an edifying experience to Lekha.

Scientists say women check out other women's breasts as much as men do. The women are just as culpable for the "objectifying gaze" as their male peers. Larger breasts, narrower waists and bigger hips prompted the longest looks. Women, Psychologists say that women do it often for comparisons. Men do it because, based on evolution, they are more drawn to curves because curves imply better childbearing abilities! Tracy Vaillancourt found that women express indirect aggression toward other women, and that aggression is a combination of “self-promotion” making themselves look more attractive, and “derogation of rivals,”. One women will be more or less will be catty about other women.

She asked Dolly, “Kashmiri women look so much pretty and cool and with such moisterous skin. How could that be? “

“Kerala women are the beautiful people I have ever seen.” Dolly was up front at that.

“What kind of face packs and lotions you use to keep the spunky complexion?” Lekha asked.

“Do it in the natural way. Mix sandalwood powder with milk and saffron to create a thick paste. Apply on the face and rub in circular fashion. This simple and natural face pack helps in restoring moisture to the skin. You can try it at home. For the naturally moisturized skin, Just mix milk cream with a bowl of gram flour. Apply it over your skin and let it dry. Wash it off after 20 minutes, Repeat it weekly and say goodbye to dry skin problems. You can make incredible face scrubs with almonds. Just soak 8-9 almonds in water for a couple of hours. Drain the water and keep the almonds. Crush the almonds well and blend it with milk to create a thick paste. Wash your face with this natural scrub to remove dead cells on the skin and find your natural radiance again. For hair, walnuts rich in potassium, omega-3, omega-6, and omega-9 fatty acids are proven to strengthen hair follicles. So walnut oil is heavily used for the scalp for glistening skin and long and strong hair” Dollie paused a while and giggled. “Lena’s Mom! But I do heavy make-ups, use cosmetic creams and lotions. I love all the modern beauty aids.”

Lekha wore a Kasavu saree with gold border, the pallu hung loosely and pinned on the left side of the shoulder. She wore a high necked sleeved maroon blouse that added more of a look of tradition with gold brocade. A string of jasmine loosely hung from her truss. Lena looked at her mother with gaped lip in appreciation. She exclaimed quiet innocently.

“My mom is the beautifullest mom in the world. You cannot judge her age by her skin”. That was something Lena heard in the TV ads. She was a bit embarrassed when everybody joined in her innocuous jest. Soon she was whisked away to her class by a baby sitter.

Stephan slid down into bitter tears of guilt and self-reproach. He felt desperate, criminally molested, drained and insecure. He was hit over the head with a guilt trip. He kissed his beautiful wife and the kid without waking them up beset with regret and remorse.

“Lekha was a wounded tiger inside. She did not touch on the incident any more, but I could sense the tides of intense anguish and despair raging in her heart. Still waters run deep.” Stephen was quiet desolate.

Maya was equally stressed. She wondered what happened in that despised moment. “Can my husband brook such fierce perfidy, the breach of fidelity that cannot be compromised? Have I been cuckolding?” She felt guilty for the deviant infidelity on her loving partner.

Weeks passed. Nothing drastically changed outwardly. But the ice began to thaw, Lekha became less rebellious although she showed disquiet on his positive advances. Stephan persisted with his efforts to mollify her.

He wished;”Everything will be normal soon” although they were still aliens under the same roof”

While in bed, Stephan surveyed at the knocked-up wife. She is lying on her left side. A loose black opal necklace lazily decked her chest. The little miracle is growing inside the preggie. She has put on extra kilos in the front and the belly is growing more like a water melon. She has become less moody. Her abdominal muscles are quite toned and tight now and she had a bigger right breast. She adorned a growing thick, luxurious hair. She is in her 2^nd semester. Faint tan lines of linea nigra ran from her umbilicus to the ribcage and had a cluster of chin spots also. Last time it ended at the belly button. The areolas surrounding her nipples have turned darker. Her looks have gone for the better.

Stephan crooned in her ear.” Prepare to paint the nursery blue. This time it is the boy”

She let out a faint smile. “Oh! You are putting on your weight” feigning to be somber. She felt for her cold feet, her legs seemed hairsuit, her body dry.

“I will keep it steady throughout your pregnancy” He laughed pleased with her witty remark. Lekha nestled against her husband.

“Everything tally with the old-wives predictions. When our Miss Sunshine was in your womb, I remember you had acne all on your body. Now you have the perfect complexion which indicates a boy. Your belly carried Lena high. You were struggling from heart burns and high pregnancy nausea. The baby’s heart rate was high above 140.”

“These old wives tales do not hold truth. As always there is 50-50 chance for a boy or girl and is only a bit of fun.” She smiled back amused with his knowledge in the ancient wisdom.

“There is no harm in having a little fun. A boy or girl makes no difference in our life.”

“True; then we can also have the wee test and the ring test too.” She held her wedding ring tied to a piece of hair so that it dangled above her belly.

“Look how the ring move. You are right” The ring moved around a circle.

“These old-wives theories cannot out rightly be dismissed as jokes. There are some researches to support the theory that pregnant women who crave more food each day are more likely to be having a boy.” They laughed heartily.

Stephan was much relaxed as he had found his wife laughing with ease after the incident in the lecturer’s room.

Pregnancy is an event that involves numerous somatic and psychological changes. Months long stressor too that can trigger different perinatal complications like mood swings, pain and emotional upheavals that may affect the new-born. Stephan wanted to help her with emotional and psychological support. Marriage is a union of two souls in one body, a single avatar in two halves. In modern era we say better halves. It does not limit to a terminology, but is the matter of sharing of responsibility which justifies each other to be a better half. The journey of pregnancy is the division of responsibilities to make it a unified and memorable one. The mother needs be safeguarded as she faces numerous primal changes both internal and external if the fetus needs to be well-nourished. The pregnancy is the period when men are to be more patient and listen to the wife as it is the absolute emotional journey for her.

Stephan stayed with her side more frequently. He assisted her in cooking so that she could take some much needed breaks. He discussed small things like baby’s name , health policy , some investment for future. Lekha is in the 3rd trimester which had been a huge discomfort for her. This has been most critical for them since the baby’s growth is rapid. The gynecologist apprised them that the baby grows up to 3 times its sizes during the 3rd trimester and should be provided with ample nutrition and care. They visited the doctor every second week with the little Lena clinging his hands. They kept track of the baby-weight as directed, took the iron, calcium and vitamin supplements on time. On Stephan’s persistence Lekha had to undergo regular yoga and breathing exercises. He kept away from all party-animal and friends buddy role.

He very often reminded her “Your unborn baby in your womb can see, hear and feel all that is going around it. You can even talk to your baby” He stroke her belly gently.

“How do the new mothers lactate automatically when they hear babies cry? Why does that even happen if the baby does not belong to them?” Stephan often wondered.

“Do you have the couvades syndrome?” She mocked him seeing his extra attentiveness to her. That is what they call the phantom pregnancy or sympathetic pregnancy.”They laughed sumptuously.

Stephan was overwhelmed on her recovery out of the self-inflicted and protracted ordeal. He was close to devastation and at his wits end. He felt rejuvenated as the situation has reached normalcy as if he has conquered the entire world.

As a new addition is to be brought in, they felt the need to shift to a more spacious environment.

The two storied abode is a spacious retreat, with verdant lawn and a magnificent landscaping around, located in a quiet, peaceful and area in a gated community. It is full of designer colored walls with stylish flooring, roll down blinds and vintage furniture with air conditioning in each floor. On entering the veranda on the ground floor, an arched passage leads into a spacious, stone carved living room, painted yellow. A large designer sofa added to the lively vibe. From the living room one enters the master bedroom and the kitchen. The large and chic master bed room has en-suite bathroom, four-poster bed with Hessian drapes and a large walk-in wardrobe. The bathroom has a two persons Jacuzzi with separate toilet area, luxurious jetted tub and shower. The living room opens to another bedroom that also has en-suite bathroom and a walk-in closet. The open plan Kitchen is equipped with granite counters, cupboards, LG refrigerator and 6 burner gas stove, dishwasher, coffee maker machine, blender, stainless steel appliances and other culinary essentials. It has an open view to the rear garden through a large window. The dining area had exquisite round table with six oak chairs. The sculptural adobe staircase led to the 1st floor. There are two double bedrooms both having en-suite bathrooms and walk-in closets. Each bedroom offers is exquisite with vintage interior decorations and furniture. The windows opened to the astounding lake view of the most beautiful Vembanat Kayal. The open terrace was a added charm.

A huge photographic triptych of crucifixion stood high in the living room. It was an amazing fancy house.

When the broker took us to the house, she looked amazed, but soon was devastated. . Lekha felt it as heavily extravagant and was shattered when she looked at the monthly rental. They do not want such a spacious accommodation for three lives.

“Living from paycheck to paycheck is disastrous, and it sucks leaving one emotionally crushed. Financial wizards say that debt has a way of snowballing and your stress snowballs right along with it.” Lekha was obviously anxious.

“Economists say that spending 20% on rent, utilities and other maintenance is the new normal, nothing to worry about. I wont get cost burdened. It is affordable.” Stephan reassured her.“

“I am not cheapskate or stingy. Also I don’t believe starving is saving. We will have a new one to arrive now. We will have to save our resources to other bigger dreams. If my childhood taught me anything, it’s that you don’t really need to have a lot of money to have a good life.” She sighed wearily. “ All you really need is enough clothes to keep you warm, a roof over your head, food and water in your belly, something to engage your mind and body, and good people in your life for friendship and guidance. That’s all children really need. That’s all people really need. Everything else is just fluffs and extra embellishments. Do I really need a high end chef’s knife? Not really. I’m a decent home chef at best.”

” Cheapness uses price as a bottom line; frugality uses value as a bottom line. I can save a good amount in my travel costs. I have a careful judgement on every single dime I spend.” Stephen gave her a huge wink.

Lena was impressed. She thought of setting up an amazing terrace veggie garden on the 1^st floor to grow every day spices and herbs. She fixed the spots were sunshine is in abundance.

“ It is spacious out there! No? dad;Garlic, chillies, herbs, tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, kale, bitter gourds, Spaniards and other curry leaves can be easily grown.”

Stephan tried to cajole his wife. “Women who are thrifty with their money are considered sexy and intelligent, a new study has found.” Lekha laughed heartily.

“I am not buying a private island or chartering a jet to Atlanta to reserve a table for the Baja Mexican sea-food or mesquite grilled meats, or taking you to Tipsoo lakes for capturing the stunning shots of Rainier reflected in the lake. I just want my loved ones a bit of relax and fun,” Stephan was final. “ Nor am I building the ridiculous Xanadu estate for myself and my family to live on.”

“OK . As you like Sirs. “ Finally she had to succumb to the logic.

There is a fine line between cheap and frugal, and the side on which you fall can make all the difference. Trying to get best out of the expenses is frugality. Comfortable in their living space reduces stress and helps well-being. Home becomes an emotional refuge. Home means a secure, cheerful place where you are respected and loved. It cannot be an ugly shell. Our sense of the place we live is closely tied to our sense of who we are. There is no place like home.

Roy T.Bennett says, “Attitude is a choice, happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever you make, makes you. Choose wisely.”

Stephan got a new a land phone installed in the house. By 1998 he has purchased an Escotel wireless phone which was rare gadget in Kerala. Hardly 2 years since the first for the state, renowned writer Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai and then Vice Admiral A R Tandon of the southern Naval Command had exchanged pleasantries to each other using hand held mobile phones in the presence of famed writer Kamala Das. It was a chick gadget with a small antenna. Stephan kept it as a precious possession although sparingly used.

Lekha was nearing the last period of the 3^rd semester. She had problems with preterm labor with persistent backache, regular contractions, and vaginal bleeding that necessitated frequent ultrasonic examinations and pre-eclampsia that involved elevated blood pressure. The auntie Mary arrived in the afternoon. Stephan was relieved as the auntie has ministered the post-natal care during the first delivery.

Lekha was very happy with her presence. Mary was with her in the entire ordeals when Stephan took his wife home after marriage. Those were the turbulent days, when the new couples worried whether Stephan’s family would accept her. Lekha regarded Mary closely.

Mary has grown and gained weight and appeared pudgy faced with flaccid butts and boobs. She has transformed a lot from an hour-glass body to a pear-shaped, in to a slow and grotesque gait. She wore a by-spectacled glass which further aggravated her squint eyes. The high-heeled sneakers refused to give her additional height. Mary looked a teeny midget in respect of hight, standing next to Stephan.

”When I met her at Stephans home after the marriage, She looked moderately fleshy and beautiful, a marvelous youngster ready at my heels to make me comfortable.” Lekha reminisced.

The auntie would shoot back when somebody looks at her amused with a bemused countenance.

She quips, “Studies launched in 1960 concluded that pear-shaped women of bigger hips than waists, are less likely to suffer from heart disease and diabetes than are apple-shaped men”

Mary had been a wonderful post partum doula, a well-informed birth advocate and her skills were a handy tool in Lekha’s first pregnancy. Though not having a formal obstetric training, she gave guidance and support during labor and delivery when Lena was to announce her entry to the ring.

.Lena was the happiest as the arrival of Mai has been always a welcome fest. Mai would take her in the garden, read stories and speak about a lot of things which she did not understand well. She helped her in the arithmetic’s and English lessons too.

After a full-term pregnancy Lekha was due on Christmas eve. Mary on her routine examination of her sister found that the dilation has started 3 days back. Random and painless Braxton-Hicks contractions have set in. They took her to the hospital a day before she was due. Stephan and his daughter were confined to the waiting room, or "stork club".

Early next day, the regular contractions started. She was whisked to the triage room and a fetal monitor was hooked on to the belly to check the baby’s heart rate and measure the contractions. IV poles were fixed at the bedside and she got the IV on to her hands.

Later the auntie explained to my Dad that; “ Misoprostol and Pitocin doses have been served and she was fully dilated in 5 hours. There was a quick epidural. The nurses started the medications to induce labor. Aminoctamy was done for breaking water by the doctor and the baby was crowning.”

The contractions had now become more intense and she writhed in pain.

It was a normal veginal berth. A clean bundled baby was put in the hands of the father in less than 5 hours. Stephan-junior had little wispy tuffs of hair all over his head.

He was wrapped in a blanket, weighed and measured and given doses of vitamin K and had his first breast feeding within 30 minutes.

The Auntie said to the little girl wondering; “The clamp will remain in place for twenty-four to forty eight hours, or until the cord is dry and no longer bleeds. The stump that remains after the clamp is removed will fall off sometime between one and three weeks after birth.” The whole drama made no sense to Lena.

Lekha looked at Stephan. Admiringly, his prediction has come true. She was discharged a couple of days after, the mother and babe were hale and hearty. Mary took charge of the whole family and domestic chores. She prepared food, tidied Lena , prepared her to school, slept with her in the bedroom at the ground floor.

The life was smooth and everybody’s eyes were glued on the boy. The new addition has become an addiction.

*****Maya fell into bipolar depression, become a paranoid and has always sulked in self-guilt and revulsion. When she became depressed, she felt sad, tearful, empty and hopeless. She lost interest in most activities. At times, in the mood shift, she felt euphoric, full of energy, at other times swayed to unusual irritability which affected sleep, energy judgment and relationship. She lost appetite and weight significantly. During such episodes of mood swings, she often thought of quitting her profession. She was full of self-loathing and hopelessness. Her self-esteem was on the ebb. The disorder required long-term treatment as it was a chronic, relapsing illness.

Maya’s husband Sreenivas, a senier bank manager in his early fiftees was Stephan’s best friend and well-wisher. They met ones in the week end at the pub. Sreenivas was back on the wagon after a long gap while Stephan remained a social drinker. They sat in a corner cube with pleasant chairs and table. The high mast sodium street lamps from the busiest junction of the main metro, got struck on the glass panel and smashed in to smithereens inside the cube. They ordered for a beer each.

They didn’t breathe a word about what happened in the lectures room.

“Stephan, “We are moving. My wife can’t hold the depression any more. She has asked for a transfer to her home town in the capital.” Sreenivas spoke in a subdued and forlorn tone.

Stephan knew that there wear gossips doing the rounds. After the incidence he did not take initiatives to mingle with her freely. Stephan heard rumors on her deteriorating heath. Over the months, she has gone anemic. They hardly spoke to each other in the office as the sense of guilt was mounting on them.

Stephan said in a low, muffled tone. “Isn’t she on medication? Although one may tend to believe that medication is not necessary, perhaps it might help speedy recovery.

Bipolar disorder requires long-term treatment. It is a chronic, relapsing illness. it’s important to continue treatment even when one is feeling better. “

“Flowers shall bloom till the world lasts. But the flowers that withered in the autumn, they won’t blossom in the spring.” Said the nerve-wrecked Sreenivas.

Pangs of guilt spliced Stephan’s bones. He writhed in unfounded agony, and stood stoic in the others presence.

“What medical regimen is prescribed for her?” Stephan asked.

“bipolar disorder requires a combination of medication, psychotherapy, and psycho education. Sometimes hospitalization would become necessary as well.”Sreenivas paused for a while and continued.

“Mood Stabilizers like lithium valproic acid, lamotrigine are presently prescribed. It is told that it can take months to achieve the results. Perhaps antipsychotic medications may have to be used in combination with mood stabilizers.”

Stephan sighed and kept silent waiting for Sreenivas to continue.

“I would also be on transfer. We must be aware of risks. Counseling or psychotherapy can help build up healthy habits and overcome potential barriers to good mental health.” Sreenivas fell deep in his thoughts.” Perhaps the transfer might be affected by the month end. Maya has suggested we would host a farewell to our close friends here. All of you from her department are welcome. You can consider this as an invitation.”

Stephan smiled and nodded. He was in a dizzy.

“There are 3000 plus direct words with a wide range of idioms and slangs in English associated with liquor or booze, perhaps more words than those relating to sex or anger.” The pot-valiant Professor from English department asserted.

“I bet it could run over a lakh, far in number than words that attribute to sex or anger.” Another young lecturer in English topped up his Professor.

If maid or widow you would win,

And wear your wished-for treasure,

You'll find it best to fill your skin

He turned to some humming; probably he couldn’t remember the whole lines. He soon amped up and continued the old English ditty, lost in haste.

While more might overshoot your aim;

So woo her-half-seas over

Rajesh was half-see over with just a noggin of rum. Sreenivas and his wife came over there and said, “Have enough O-be-joyful, brothers enjoy for her health.” They abruptly left the scene.

The liquor-starved-monks from the departments were hilariously drunk. The dead men-the empty beer bottles on the table lay agape. Stephan ate nothing while others topped up their bellies with plateful of Prawn, chicken, mutton Biriyani’s. They belched the air out to refill the space.

The whole gang drank for three hours and were loaded for bear. They were whisked to their residences by the aides of the couple. Stephan was helped by Sreenivas him selves to the Waggoner and sped off to the villa. He assisted Stephan up to the veranda and stood there. Stephan managed to enter the living room and plunked on to the sofa. Lekha came out from her room.

“ I am husband to Maya, the physics lecture at Stephan’s colleague. And she is transferred to Trivandrum. Thank you, Stephan to take part in our pleasure.” Sreenivas left abruptly.

Lekha stood stunned for a while. She had all her wits drained. Mary leaned his body against her own as a human crutch, rested his head on her shoulder and stroked his hair as his legs wobbled precariously. He held on like grim death, throwing his full weight on her. She painstakingly hobbled her selves to the adjacent bed room in the ground floor. Mary put him under the shower, poured cold water over his head plentifully and toweled off his body dry as he babbled. Mary made him to drink a lot of water and left him to sober. He slept like a rock. His dark curly hair has flopped down to his eyes and the eyes hard-closed.

“You addle-brained madcap!” Lekha ran around in the kitchen like a grumpy cat.

Auntie Mary was worried the way the situation began to spoil. “You've got to break this belief that your partner's supposed to make you happy. You probably have some fairytale-type expectations. You see, too many people live with hate in this world. Those same people live with anger and fear. This is often the way power-and-control struggles to play out in a relationship: trying to get dominance. If only you are happy within you, then only you can make others happy".

She spoke low inorder that Lekha is not hurt.

“God gave you this amazing opportunity to love. It brought you to so many beautiful places, taught you so much about life and gave you memories to be cherished forever. How can you ever be angry about that?

“I was insulted. Look how he asserted that he is the husband of Maya. It is a revenge.”

“Giving your partner the silent treatment, making passive-aggressive jabs, or keeping frustration pent up inside isn't going to fix whatever is bothering you.”

Emotional agitation, anger and hurt feelings bring a lot of distress and lead nowhere, except to more pain, suffering and broken relationships. They disturb your mind, disrupt your concentration, and prevent you from focusing on the matters at hand. If you wish to enjoy inner peace, it is imperative that you try to gain at least some degree of inner detachment.

“Who is the most miserable man in this world?” Aunty asked Lekha. “The death of the male or female first. Which would youappreciate more as the couples get old?

Lekha remained silent as if she did not hear her sister-in-law.

“I have met a lot of miserable elders in the old-age-care-homes. It is the widowman who suffer the most the old age. None in the world bear the throes of a man who lost his wife in the old age.”

The lady told a story.

“A noble man lived an aristocratic life who never entered the kitchen except for food. The wife kept everything ready at the dining table. All that he wanted to do was to wash the hands and sit at the dinner table. The wife read what he wanted from his face.

The husband had a habit of drinking a cup of water at the sack time and back after urination during sleep-interruption. The wife knew the habit well. She keeps a tumbler of water and a glass on the dining table. One day his wife has dead. It was the first time he was alone and cut-off. One night after a broken-sleep he went for the usual water. But the jar was not there.

The absence of the wife began to affect his life.

Diffident and bashful, he called out his daughter-in-law to fetch some water. She did and he slacked his thirst and slept. As usual after a brief sleep, he again woke up. After urination, he looked for water. But the jug was empty. With dry throat he knocked several times at the door of the room where his son and wife were sleeping.

He was taken aghast when his daughter-in-law opened the door. She simmered in displeasure having broken her sleep.” What?” She asked angrily.

“Nothing serious. It’s OK” He was shocked and unnerved for he had never encountered such an ghastly face. He just did not have the temerity to ask for the glass of water and returned back to sleep.

The next morning he was found dead in his bed.”

The aunty finished the story and said; “The parting of the wife is the most difficult thing a husband has to suffer in the marital life. Children or in-laws cannot supplant the wifedom.

All the aunties pleadings did not cut much ice with Lekha. Mary knew that Lekha was blowing hot and cold and is in a desperate need of rest. “Start to be realistic. Wake up and smell the coffee!”

Life became horrible again but Stephan kept always silent in the house as he did not want to have a shouting match to make his voice heard outside to stir the neighbors.

Men are the most helpless of all the creatures of God in front of his wife weeping and pleading for release. You can beat her, mishandle her, mangle her but you cannot miss her.

Can anybody forget the beautiful moments we created?

“ I have made every initiative as a man. But she never succumbed. Even th0ugh the pressure was great between us as it should. I was ready to forsake anything. See how it has turned out. But we loved each other. Neither was she-a perfect batter axe to turn.

No relations are perfect. We climbed all the way to the top together, perhaps only to slip and fall as soon as we got there. We couldn't undo what had been done, Men are the best dads, the selfless providers. We ran carefree in this theme park we call life. Holding each others' hands, we laughed, cried, loved, and we were in awe of everything we experienced. We were children with dreams, and together, we thought about the day when all of ours would come true-the roller coasters never to be stopped. The music will die down, the lights will be shut off, and our magical journey continues. But every time remind our self of the beginning of the relationship and all of the reasons why we fell in love with her.

Panikker felt sad with the way he had been suffering. To relieve the scene he said.

“ Do you know that Socrates was often credited with the remark on his wife Xanthippe who once even poured the contents of a chamber port over his head?By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you will be happy. If you get a bad one, you will be a philosopher.”

Socrates was once asked as to why he put up with his wife when she is an acclaimed virago. His answer was that he married her precisely for argumentative nature. His thinking was that if he could put up with her, manage her fiery temper, then he could easily converse with any other person in Athens.”

Stephan felt a little grotty. “I looked at her because I thought she were the most beautiful thing in the world. I didn't care what she were wearing – whether she had makeup on. I'd look at her and get lost in her laugh and smile. Whatever flaws she believed she had, I loved - how she'd look in the mirror and always suck in her stomach; how she'd pace around on the phone when she were nervous. I noticed everything. But I loved it.”

Silence stood firm and turgid between them.

“I am afraid, sometimes I feel I am losing my grip, feeling torn and would make an argumentative Idiot. At times I have got to keep my head down and play it as it comes.”

Stephan stood clenching his hands on the lap.

A man who shout for us

2019-07-08T06:36:00.002-07:00

In certain situations, its unique contexts shall be dramatic. Certain things happen in certain times; but the time will pass as usual but not before it points to certain right humans- they come with new ideals and expectations with fresh methods of revolts. They are the bell weather of the message that the good and bad we do, shall at the end turn up to the good of the people.

Dr Ramesh, we know him, the man who was front-runner in the Koodamkulam strikes, the sterilite struggle at Thoothukkudi , again found on the forefront of the mission to awake people on the dangers of neutrino experiments at Thane. He had a different type of revolt for closure of a liquor shop. He was on the war path with his wife’s dead body clad in white shrouds on the road while his daughter fights for life, grievously wounded.

Do you think it is an anserine stupidity?

The doctor with his family, when they were passing in a car through Jambuga in Anakkatty on the other side of the Attappadi valley saw a beautiful sight. In the backdrop of the Western Ghats, a flock of wool-bearing merinos floated on the road like a fluffy cotton wool. When driving, enthralled in the envious spectacle, they saw a lorry at breakneck speed, hurtling towards the herd. In no time the cotton wool turned in to a pool of blood. The blood flowed down on the road and mingled with earth. He was dumbstruck and stood transfixed to the seat.

After three months, he received an anonymous call. Dr. Ramesh reached at the same spot at Jambugandi. The blood was still flowing on the road that drenched the soil-but this time it was the blood of his wife who met instant death on a crash between two-wheeler's. The body lay on the side of the road. A moment he was whisked back to the time when his wife Shobhana has joined as a nurse in a hospital at Pathanamthitta, their love life and the birth of a girl child. They chose a path, many wouldn’t have dared to tread on. But the doctor who was trained in forensics did not get dizzied. At once he knew it was not an accident!

Dr Ramesh, the humanist was a part of many a struggle on ecological preservation. The Tasmac bar in Tamil Nadu situated close to the liquor-prohibition area of Attappadi in Kerala was shuttered on the prolonged struggle of Attappadi women. The mothers were the front runners in the struggle having seen their males succumb to death on wild-drinking. The bar closed at Anakkatti was reopened hardly three km’s away from Jambugandi bar with 24 hours availability. Vehicles flew free and the accident stories were a sequel. The folks in the area were on protest and the police recommended for its closure. The bar was kept open on the nexus between the high-up’s and the liquor shop owners. Shobhana met with the accident when a motor bike that came from the side of the bar collided with her scooter. She was returning home with her daughter riding pillion from VidhyaBhavan school in Anakkatti. Shobhana died on the spot and the daughter was hurried to the hospital. The whole village stood besides the doctor in tears. He was serving them for the last quarter of the century, providing them medical treatment either free or on nominal fee of Rs. Fifty. The doctor has decided to move from there only after a decision is given on the bars closure. He sat besides the corpse, the Adivasis next to him.

Police reached the spot and assured orally to close down the liquor shop, but there was no firm commitment and the strike continued. Finally the Tahsildar presented himself before the doctor and gave him a written assurance. The stir was temporarily suspended ending the six hour resistance that continued till midnight. Dr Ramesh went to see his hospitalized daughter only after the corpse being taken to the Medical College Hospital at Coimbathore. The bar was shut down , but matters didn’t end there. The Tahsildar was transferred out; the police would only say that the investigation is going on when queried.

The doctor recounts in tears. He hails from Kambam Sullippetty in Kumili, Pathanamthitta. He passed the CBSE in 1983 from the Sainik School in Amaravthi with flying colors. His batchmates are all in high positions in defense services. When asked why didn’t opt for military service, he would say that my ambition was to become a doctor working in the villages. After being graduated from the famous Madhurai Medical College, he chose Adivasi zone at Anakkatti in Coimbathur as his preferred area of service.

But the doctor says: “I have not come to serve the down trodden. They are doing a service to me. I have opted this place to live as a villager, to grow my daughter knowing-up the village. These villagers have given me an opportunity to lead a different life from the usual medical professionals, those having no empathy and distanced with the people they serve.

His daughter was given the elementary education at school till she was in the 5^th standard. Then she was put to home steady, knowing the village and the people. The subjects of study for the daughter included cave writings and rock arts in Kerala and Tamil Nadu and he traveled extensively with the family. When they came to know of Vidyavanam School, the daughter joined there. After the tenth class, there was a hiatus of a year to join Plus-One as the delay was caused over certain problems in the recognition of the school. They decided to study about the culture and civilization on the banks of Neyyar river with the aid modern cameras and equipment's. In the meantime, the school got the recognition and straight away she joined the Plus-One classes. On the day before the accident Dr Ramesh was at Thanjavoor. He arrived late in the night and the next morning he drove his daughter to school. He was to look for a rental house near the school and pay the fee. But Shabhana told him to remain at home and take rest as he was fatigued and way-worn on the overnights tedious journey. She assured him that she will take the child back, but alas, that was her last journey!

The doctor knew it was not a common accident and he made parallel investigations. Shobana had worn the protective gear which was expensive and the best available in the market. The clip was fixed tight. The front was completely mangled and the scooter lay in the opposite direction and there was no tangible damage to the crashing vehicle. The body was found lying differently than in any such accidents. From subsequent inquiries he found that the rider was a speed freak with super bikes. His hobby was to ride with the front wheel popped above ground. He noticed pictures of the youth cavorting around doing elaborate wheelies, in the face book. The crash was caused in a ride of similar wheelie by the youth who got tanked up in the nearby outlet of TASMAC. Shobhana’s neck was flexed. Blood gushed as the clip of the helmet pierced on to her neck. The doctor told that she was dead before she could have sensed the pain.

While the body was shifted for post-mortem, Dr Ramesh solicited the sobbing Adivasis to treat Shbhana as one among them. As desired, the body was taken back to the spot and Adivasis received the mortal remains with due honor. They carried her to the forest in the traditional green bamboo tubes, the body bedecked in red velvet pall. A herd of wild elephants trudged outside the forest in loud trumpets to great the funeral cortege. Hitherto unknown in their custom, they cremated her, the one from the world outside their lineage, with due obeisance in their traditional rites.

Tamil Nadu has to be involved and kept bound in all actions. Kerala has to initiate discussions and pressure mounted if needed-lest liquor and narcotics would eat away the region and its future generations.

Dr Ramesh was also in the group of petitioners who went to meet the then CM Sri. Achuthanandan to sensitize him on the intricacies and the mix-ups in neutrino experiments at Theni forest zone. The CM agreed to do whatever is possible and he did do something.

Now the doctor has one request-the request of the husband of a Malayalee women who martyred for having worked in tandem to the up-liftment of the society. The whole tings that Kerala do to the development of Attappadi including liquor ban are torpedoed by the hoodlums whose work is centered in the Tamil Nadu area on the east. Crores of money are getting squandered. We need to work hand in hand with Tamil Nadu if we want to save Attappadi which is the source of Bhavani and the Shiruvaniand and its Adivasis.

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This story appeared in the week end Mathrubhumi, dated 07 Sunday July 2019. This is an attempt to render a word to word traslation.

Pulwara Terror

2019-03-06T08:10:00.001-08:00

Ministry of External Affairs, soon after the air strike on terror havens, in a tacit but categorical address to the nation said; “ In this operation, a very large number of Jaishe Mohammed terrorists, senior commanders, trainers and bruits of Jihadis who have been trained for Fidayeen actions were eliminated.”

It was a target accomplished. Neither the army nor the ruling dispensation went for numbers. The strategic and tactical action within the ‘rules of engagement” so as not to escalate, was designed as a pre-emptive strike under a definite mandate from the Government. Our soldiers fought against the terrorists and their infrastructure, in a situation akin to the classic hot-war like scenario.

The proxy war is a Philip to the Pakistani psyche.

Political big wigs in the ruling side soon jumped into the fray projecting the self-estimation of the damage to 250 to 400 range. Close to the heels of the foreign press, the desi opposition played Monday-morning quarterback, asking for counts and proofs. Political slugfest snowballed into reprehensive mud-slinging and overt questioning of the forces.

War on terror is not a hot war but war-mandated actions. Hence hybrid-war situations necessarily carry grey areas as explained by a veteran Air Marshell. In one of the channel talks, Admiral(Retd),Kumar has been explaining in hindsight , how during 2001, a planned action deep inside LOC had to be withdrawn on the advice of the then PM Sri.vajpayee, in lieu of the last minute input, that the terrorists have been shifted to a hideout located in between a hospital and a school, just before the parliament attack- to avoid massive collateral damages.

Our services are apolitical. We are fighting a hybrid war, a proxy war. Those who bay for blood, counts and proofs; Do you expect the army to get shot in the process? Why can’t we resist the temptation of an instant proof when the technology analyses can assuage our thirst soon? When you ask for proof, willy nilly you show the deficit of trust in the forces.

Can someone be found guilty of perjury if he surmises that the Politicians are discrediting the soldiers?

The brazen and daylight terror unleashed in Phulwara cannot go unnoticed in the din.

Major Gaurav Arya(Retd)quotes Rudyard Kipling in his tweet;

“God and the soldier, we adore
In time of danger, not before
The danger passed, and all things righted
God is forgotten, and the soldier slighted. “

Dukh mein sumiran sab kare, sukh mein karen na koi
Joi sukh mein sumiran karen toh dukh kahe hoi

In the light,Me and my Nilavu

2019-01-21T09:18:00.002-08:00

The name Simon Britto Rodrigues is the one which stands fervidly engraved in the Kerala psyche, heart and soul. His storybook-life is on the dissection table of the medical students. He is referred to as the man who loved life to a great degree. His soul mate Seena metaphrases his life to the ‘one who loved life with unquenched fervour and passion’. Seena Bhaskar, his dear comrade in life is ferrying down the straits of memory, sitting in her house ‘Kayam’ which in literal sense approximates to the ‘depth’ at Vaduthala in Cochin, close to three weeks since her husband breathed last.

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This is a story told by Seena Bhasker, Britto ’s wife to Vinod Payam appeared in Deshabhimani dated Jan 20, Sunday 2019.

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The graceful automated wheel-chair looked askance at me as a forlorn figure, pleading; ’why I am being left alone. Britto wouldn’t leave me with such ease like changing apparel”. I caressed its arm with a white kerchief. The waft of the tender dust swept into my nose. It is three weeks, the passenger disembarked. When back as usual after switch-on, the mechanised chair accosted me as Britto does; “Seena, everything ready, No?’

Britto! Biji Hilal, our friend dropped in yesterday. She came weeping, pale as paper with a tender coconut in one hand. She said you had been vivid in her dream!! The girl, who wouldn’t even see her mother in her dreams, was weary and devastated, talking with you in the witching hours. Britto chided her in the dream; “Nilavu craves for the tender coconut. Why don’t you take it for her?” I laughed at the fallacy wondering as to how on earth, could a fervent materialist like him, could show up in her dream!

Britto! You don’t forget to care Nilavu’. Do you? Didn’t you ditch the darned thrift on me when Nilavu came amongst us? Do you recollect; when we started life I asked for 5 rupees to buy a rose stem, you mercilessly cared no two hoots making me cry out like bamboos creak. Certainly, I do!! The last 20 days, Nilavu and I are shrouded fathoms deep in your memory. She would ask for the Abba. The nervous queries of the girl in the Vth class drown me in the dire straits of grief. She, knee-high to a grasshopper, would wipe my eyes in a way as if come of age, console me: “Amma, Abba is with us here.”

Britto ‘walked back to life from certain death’ sharp 35 years ago on Oct 14^th when he clenched back his life from them. After 10 years and a day, we were married, till then we were friends. Our relation blossomed not with intent to become partners in life. It so happened. The friendship led to the nuptials on the culmination of my desire to remain his friend forever. Those days I remember him asking me “Seena, Do you vouch that our friendship would endure if you were married to another man? “ It was because I was serious-minded to remain in the shade of his life that I pulled out of the campus and my relatives to enjoy the half slice of his distressed life.

Now in this huge vacuum, how gracious were our journey and our days that spun with love for life. I had never seen a man with such tenacity to stick on to one’s life. The happiness you enjoy, given one moment more- vanished like a line drawn by a chock, so suddenly and mercilessly. When I was away on an errant at Patna, Nalanda university, you were on an eternal journey from Thrissur. Why was it? I was at Nalanda to bring Arjun Das to Kerala. Didn’t you tell us to rummage the library to find the travel accounts in India of Xuanzang, the scholar and traveller? Didn’t you wish to make such journeys as early as 2012? How will we go now? Who would write a book on the experience of such a tour? How I could read that book, enthralled, flummoxed and speechless? With whom Nilavu would quench her curiosities?

When the sourness grew in our private lives, we have shifted to a newly built house at Vaduthala. To reflect the profundity of his thought, he christened it “Kayam”.When the baby came there, she became our “Nilavu” (literal sense ‘the soft, silvery moonbeam’) Nilavu, our little daughter did not make a fuss, never imposed herself and was discreet enough to know that our life was the incessant journey of troubles and turbulence. As early in her sixth month, she would be on all fours and help him when the book slipped or when his plates fell. Even as a toddler, she didn’t give a whimper to make sure not to trouble us. Only now after being grown up like her sober father, she has turned to whine, grizzle or groan.

Britto was worried as Malayalam is not taught as a subject in central school curricula. He taught her the language by purchasing the Soviet children books. Britto taught his Dukka-as she calls her- the candy-like Malayalam laying her on the chest. Both were crazy about football. It was sitting on the wheel-chair that Britto dreamt of the vast play areas of life. Britto was a fan of Portugal while Nilavu was fanatic about Brazil. I stood in between their long arguments as a crappy referee, tired and taunted, who knew no ground rules.

Nilavu loved to travel with us. Britto often wondered that not many children at this age would have partaken in such arduous journey to Himalaya. Britto had always wished to travel unplanned and hassle free. His final exit was unprepared and undecorated leaving no cue. He believed that the travels should not be aimless. It should be like an uncomfortable journey in a general compartment. Reaching out for the references of the places he visited he would say; “Learn about the places where you go, if necessary write on it”

‘Britto’s wife’ is not an appellation or an epithet that we both liked. We were friends and comrades. Whenever his masculine supremacy lay bare, I would remind him; ” Britto ! No.” The response would be an amorous and disarming smile. He was a good listener- which I felt was his great plus. He would talk hours together with the fisher-women. He would listen attentively to their miseries, keep an umbrella over their miseries and find solutions. I would swipe at him; ”Who that Britto !! Was she your old fancier? The quick rejoinder is shot back; “Not that Seena. It is great to feel their pleasure when they find someone to listen-somebody who cares them. I have watched that trait in him while he was an MLA. Britto’s intervention had paved the way for the increased attention of Kerala to the problems of specially-abled people. The ramp constructed in the Kerala assembly was after his mediation. Britto moved a bill in the assembly for constructing a graveyard for the castles and religion less who die sans the funeral ceremonies. It was rejected. He was also concerned with what will happen to him after death. After Abhimanue’s murder, the concern had scaled up. He entrusted me to provide his body for the medical college and avoid the wreathe and such other post-death rituals. The only thing he desired was a party flag on his body, which I passed off as black humour, to happen after a long passage of time.

Britto had planted a passion fruit in the front yard. When Nilavu reaches her 7^th class its canopy would spread over the garden. The mango tree, not far, that gives fruits for all seasons would grow to bring the fruits by then. The picture of a father and his daughter- together they peal a mango and relish its taste!! It is an unfinished art. Britto left us for the immortal journey leaving the palette over to me. I want to finish the painting. There is a huge vacuum in my heart now-the void left behind by the shock when the giant tree fell. Britto would never allow me to keep the vacuum unfilled!! New sprouts would never cease to evolve from beneath the fallen trunk. Britto! Let the yellow passion with lush green and dense canopy flourish that is nurtured between us. My daughter and I would bash in the moonlight- in the twilights sitting under the shadow.

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Britto was a living victim of violence in campus politics. He had been stabbed by opponents in 1983 when he was an activist of the Students Federation of India, left wheelchair-bound. With urine bottle and walker, he had travelled across the country with the never-say-die spirit to live. Britto authored a couple of novels: Agragami and Maharandram. Agragami won a Sakti award and a Patyam Gopalan award. He was a state representative of Kerala Grandhasala Sangam and the first MLA to take part in the proceedings while sitting in a wheelchair. The officials had organised a ramp to let Britto's wheelchair in and to saw off a part of a seat to accommodate the wheelchair. Britto is 80 per cent physically disabled. But he prefers to say: ""I am 20 per cent able." His body is paralysed chest down.

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Can Poojari's be Marxists?

2019-01-17T03:47:00.002-08:00

Can the Poojaris, Christian padres, Islamic clerics and the manifold evangelists and holy men, work with communists? It is an old question several times being answered by EMS in toe with the famous Lenin’s narrative in ” The attitude of workers party to religion”. In a nutshell it is-when a priest becomes the part of the day to day politics, conscientiously be part of the party responsibilities, and imbibe and acknowledge the party policies,(The comprehensive Lenin's work: volume 15), he is eligible for party membership.

Lenin has been unequivocal that Religion cannot be annihilated with resistances, putting blinkers to its roots, and atheism which blatantly negates religion cannot be integral to the proletarian movement. Lenin decried the strapline “ down with religion, atheism lives long” and pooh-poohed the myth, dismissing it as superficial decor that does not conform with communistic concepts.

The resolution of Cuban communist party on religion in Oct 1980 concedes this argument in currency that the religion is a system which alienates men and is a construct to legitimise the exploitation of one class over the other. It is historically true too in that, religion overtime has acted as the ideological moor for political hegemony. Today our experience is that Faithfull’s can turn into a revolutionary who responds well to the societal obligations while equating himself to be a devote religionist. Fidel Castro has explained that the camaraderie of the two can liberate the world from exploitation. When people converge for the resistance against the predatory exploitation and imperialism, it is immaterial to double-check their stripes for faith or revolutionary spirit.

Harold Sin asserts that the famous quote from Marx; “Religion is the opium of the people” wrung out-of-context had been misconstrued and misinterpreted by the anti-Marxist historians and propagandists with negative overtones that Marxism is anti-religious to its core. Marx had made the remark in the context of the negation of the Hegel’s ideology, in the introduction of Marx’s “A contribution to the critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right” by extending his notion that it is not religion that created man, but the converse is true. Marx writes; “ Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.” It is in continuation of this narrative that the opium phraseology (It is the opium of the people) steps in, wherein he delineates how the religions work as an anodyne. When the stormy winds of the harsh realities of life strike on the face, the balm ceases to relieve your pain, it becomes dysfunctional.

Lenin, speaking of religions in 1905 alluded to this Marxian metaphor and said;” Those who toil and live in want all their lives are taught by religion to be submissive and patient while here on earth, and to take comfort in the hope of a heavenly reward. But those who live by the labour of others are taught by religion to practise charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price ticket to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”

The religion constructs an unreal public conscience that consigns men to the freaks of fait. Marx underscores the truth that the circumstances that gravitate the layman towards religion is of import. Without due regard to its underpinning causes, any criticism targeting religion ceases to be scientific.

Marxism is not a mechanical instinct on materialistic view. But while it ascertains that the material cosmos is primary, it recognises the different ideologies for its efficacy to influence man. Marx opined that when once an ideology has been accepted by the people it becomes the material forces for a change. Marxism as an ideology strongly disproves the religion when it becomes the tool that strives to hold back the reforms and keep humanity struck in the present. Marxism recognises the believers who seek solace in their faiths. It is not an ideology that is in perpetual conflict with religion. It is the art and science of class struggle. It understands that the major chunk of the oppressed and the tyrannised are religious adherents.

This is based on an article authored by Sri.P.Rajiv, a RajyaSabha MP from Kerala.

Cyber bullying -HANAN'S CASE

2018-08-02T04:09:00.000-07:00

Fighting means you could lose. Bullying means you can't. A bully wants to beat somebody; he doesn't want to fight somebody: Andrew Vachss.

ut of bed in the wee hours of the morning, an hour at her study table, she pedals her way to the fish market miles away, returns back in an auto-rickshaw to Thammanam Junction loaded with the cycle and the bucket-full, stocks the fish with a neighbour -thus starts her day.

After performing a quick morning ablutions, Hanan would run to catch the KSRTC bus to reach the Al Azhar college in Idukki’s Thodupuzha - one and half hours from her home- for she is now the third year BSc Chemistry student. When the bell chimes at 3 in the afternoon, she would gallop back in a hurry for selling the fishes till 9 in the night. This is about 19-year-old Hanan Hamid’s struggle. She was raising money for her matriculation by taking up odd jobs that of a private tutor for small children in the neighbourhood,a peddler of multicoloured handcrafted-beaded-necklaces for the womenfolk. Hanan’s dreams to become a doctor had come to a dead end as she was compelled to tight-lid her desires on future studies after plus 2 as the family had run out of resources. But she defiantly refused to get cowed down and kept her spirited fight against loads of odds to piece together a decent life. She worked for a year at call centres in Ernakulam and had to scrimp and save to build up funds for the higher studies. Her parents are now separated. Worse, she had to undergo an ear surgery.

Hanan was good at anchoring. She did dubbing at studios and could create and deliver poems impromptu. The late cine actor Kala Bhavan Mani took her with his stage shows which eased her burden in funding her studies. The obstacles fizzled out before her will and fortitude. Hanan's story with her photograph published in Mathrubhumi daily ,selling fish wearing her college uniform with a plastic cap went viral on social media. Many have promised to help her. A debutant filmmaker, Arun Gopy offered her a role alongside Pranav Mohanlal in his upcoming film. Soon, the dyed in the wool traditionalists and sceptics opened a can of worms, cried wolf and vied to call it a "marketing stunt". Trolls trundled out and a vitriolic, high decibel campaign followed accusing her of feigning penury as she was found wearing a gold ring on her fingers, wearing gloves and sporting a nice haircut and neat clothes. Muslim fringes read the riot act to her for not wearing a headscarf, crypto-liberal crops drew daggers as the film had a Mohanlal-connect and the right-wing chauvinists upset with Mathrubhumi publishers over the crappy novelette that appeared in the weekly hauled her over the coals-all in the bandwagon were busy bowling beamers at the girl.

The heinous incidence invited wrath from like-minded cross sections of the society. Chief Minister Sri. Pinarayi Vijayan expressed support for the girl and called her a “real warrior”. Sri.Kannanthanam,central minister for tourism wrote on his Facebook page, Kerala sharks stop attacking #Hanan. I’m ashamed. Here is a girl trying to put together a shattered life. You vultures!.The opposition leader, Sri. Ramesh Chennithala spoke in support of Hanan. The Kerala Women’s Commission has registered a Suo Motu case against those who allegedly abused Hanan on social media.

The social media has earned the sobriquet “the new sentinels “ of democracy. We have seen it from the Arab spring to occupy revolutions. The digital world, If not used diligently can become double-edged swords. The recent WhatsApp- Harthal in Kerala exemplifies this point. The mob lynch triggered by WhatsApp had taken 28 valuable lives in India in recent months. It reminds us of the kangaroo courts presided by the village Sathraps. Mawkish sentimentalism is the new prank for the social media wherein they have coined a special buzzword “viral”. In an impulsive bravado, they tweet, re-tweet and the process gets repeated till enough harm is done to the victim. In mob lynching and also in hate- mongering, the same undercurrent drives them all.

As of July, Facebook is reported to have a total “potential audience” of 241 million active users in India, compared to 240 million in the US. Active users in India are up by 27% in the past six months alone (+50 million), compared to growth of 12% (+26 million) in the US over the same period. WhatsApp is the world’s largest messaging app in terms of its user base, which is well over 1 billion users in India. Restricting inflammatory contents in WhatsApp is close to impossible as they are end-to-end encrypted. Given that the WhatsApp team themselves cannott read the messages, they donot have a one-off solution to stop the spread of fake news.

Trolling or cyber-bullying is a growing global phenomenon and India is no exception. India has the third-highest number of cyber-bullying cases in the world. The perpetrators enjoy anonymity and go scot-free, unwhipped of justice, and uncensored by the community in which he lives.

A recent Intel Security report shows that a worrying number of Indian children are becoming victims as well as perpetrators of online bullying.According to the recently-released Intel Security’s “Teens, Tweens and Technology Study 2015”, 81% of Indian respondents between eight and 16 are active on the social media networks. Of these, 22% have reported being bullied online — the highest in the four countries surveyed (Australia, USA and Singapore being the other three). “Cyberbullying is a fast-growing trend that Indian parents and educators can’t afford to ignore,” says Melanie Duca, marketing director, consumer-Asia Pacific at Intel Security. Reports Business Standard.

The survey done by Ipsos - a global market research company - found that 45% of Indian parents believed a child in their community was being cyberbullied, while a majority (53%) parents are aware of the issue. "The findings are quite surprising, which revealed that the frequency of cyberbullying in India was higher than that of western nations, including the US (15%), Britain (11%) and France (5%).

According to 2016 NortonNSE Cyber Security Insights report, millennials are the most commonly affected victims globally, with 40 per cent experiencing it in the previous year. More than 55 per cent of millennials in India experienced cybercrime. The report said 39 per cent of Indian millennials either experienced ransomware themselves or knew someone who had. 18 per cent of millennial victims paid the ransom but did not gain access to their files

The consequences of such “fake news” are serious. Rumours forwarded via social media, especially on WhatsApp, have led to mob lynchings of innocent people falsely accused of being cow slaughterers, child kidnappers, or worse. In the last year alone, there have been 15 such lynchings across nine Indian states, resulting in 27 deaths.

Muhammed Asam, a techie in Karnataka's Bidar was lynched by a mob at Murki village in Karnataka following a series of venomous messages shared on WhatsApp warning locals that child-lifters are roaming on the streets. At least two men were killed and six injured after mobs attacked them in India's remote north-eastern state of Tripura. Videos made in Karachi years ago, pro bono to benefit children in Pakistan were linked to lynching in India. Dr Gleb Tsipursky who served as a professor at Ohio State University and the co-founder of Pro-Truth Pledge, an initiative to promote truthfulness, said, “lynchings in India are the most violent and deadly episodes of fake news-inspired violence.” A Hindu report warns.

Unsurprisingly the political parties have their own well-oiled, paid- political- hit squads called troll teams who pervade the cyberspace with toxic texts and viral vitriol. In India, as in many other countries, the digital spaces are distilleries of discontent, rife with rumours and falsehood that get disseminated with least rudimentary fact-checking.

Sasi Tharoor referring to the punitive transfer of an official who had made bigoted remarks to an interfaith couple when they applied for a passport reminds: “As Dr Victor Frankenstein discovered, once you create a monster, it can quickly grow and escape your control. Social media, by nature, rewards speed and sensationalism, not verification and caution. Even when the truth does come out, it rarely makes it as far as fast as the lie did."
There is no easy solution to declaw the cat.

Social media space is the stygian cavern where the cyber Nomrods, who revel in drudging out untruth lurking in the dark -jeer and hurl out opprobrious epithets on every passing pedestrian. The hunter-gatherers in the netherworld of their cyber sanctuary, two days back, have fletched their arrows on to a little girl Hanan in Ernakulam. At the receiving end, Hanan teary-eyed and with folded hands appeared before the TV and implored:”People are making false allegations that it was for promotion of a movie. I am not a fraud. I have no other income. My main aim is to continue studies and support the family.”

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, the chief minister spoke about the interaction he had with Hanan after she visited him to thank him for his support. “When Hanan was subjected to cyber attacks, the Kerala government had ensured her all the protection and had also arrested the perpetrators behind the attacks. She had visited to show her gratitude for the support,” the CM said.
Praising Hanan for her hard work, Pinarayi added, “It's a matter of great pride when one is self-dependent as a student. The satisfaction one gets is immense if they fund their studies with the money they earn. Only those who have gone through such experiences in life will understand it. Hanan did not just study, but she became the pillar of support for her family. When I understand her life experiences, I feel proud of her. Move ahead bravely, Hanan. Don't lose the confidence that you showed while battling difficult circumstances, Kerala is with you."

Doff our hats for the demure damsel in distress.

“We’re living at a time when attention is the new currency. Those who insert themselves into as many channels as possible look set to capture the most value. ” Pete Cashmore, Founder of mashable.com

Abhimanyu-the darling of Maharajas

2018-07-15T00:32:00.000-07:00

erala sobs. She has every reason too-the death of an unknown student so rattled and shattered the Malayali psyche. The gruesome bloodshed outraged all and evoked all the empathy to the victim.

Abhimanyu, the 20-year-old BSc Chemistry student of Maharaja's college in Kochi, who is also a member of the Students Federation of India (SFI) which is the student wing of the ruling CPI(M), was stabbed to death when SFI students and Campus Front of India (Student Wing of PFI) workers allegedly clashed inside the campus on Sunday. 19-year-old Arjun who studies BSc Philosophy, also sustained severe injuries. He has been admitted to the Ernakukulam Medical Trust Hospital in the city and had to undergo an emergency surgery.

Abhi alias Abhimanyu ,the ballsy bloke was entrapped in the ChakraVyuha set by the bigots in wait- not in the know that the dagger of deceit would dig deep in to his flesh in the dark.His martyrdom has elevated him to eternity. Not just his parents, friends, relatives and locales but the whole state mourned for him. Many wiped their tears, some turned the newspapers back, fingers flipped on the TV remotes, eyes fixated expectantly on the alleyways through which their children reach home.

At Maharajas ,Abhimanyu, the wispy little man was loved by all with his folksy small-town image. He felt all the feels for the famished men around who had a threadbare existence while his gut got baked of starvation. Caste,cread and religion have never barred his way. He saw only humans. The frugal but industrious youngster fed his friends in the Ooru while his belly remained a wind instrument. He would not have been resentful to the monsters who grappled him and held his arms locked behind to make way for an easy kill.

Hours back he was inaugurating the area meeting of the DYFI unit of Vattavada at Koviloor . Echoing the last words of Vemuna of Hydrabad ersity who immolated himself ,revolting against the inimical and predatory trampling and usurping the Dalit rights by the religious elites, he spoke in a strong tang of border Tamil-lingo :”Anaivarum jeevikkana etta ooraka samoohamake maran puthuthalamure thayyarakkanam.Matha theevra vadathilninnum naatte naam pathukakkanam. Jathi-Matah chinthane puthuthalamurakkum valakathukkul kadathividunnvarkethire mun echirikkayaka irikkanam”(The new generation must equip itself to transform this country in to a place where people can harmoniously. We are to insulate the country against religious fanaticism). Soon after, he hurried back ,squeezed like a wedge in a Horticultural Van,to the campus to be part of the graffite scribbles for the freshers day. After the blood-and-guts arguments over graffite rights that followed, he was brutally stabbed to death by the trained henchmen of the killer gang-a well crafted crime plot executed with lethal precision.

Vattavada is a rain shadow village in the eastern part of the Western Ghats in Idukki district,located about 45 Km east of Munnar. The serene hamlet known for its terraced slopes and volleys ,sits snugly to the Top Station, in the Kerala –Tamil Nadu border, just a few meters walk through Tamil Nadu down by the PambadumChola gap road. It is the lone vegetable farm in winter famous for its wide variety of crops not seen elsewhere in Kerala which include apple, orange, strawberry, blackberry, plums and passion fruits. The hoarfrost atop

the scenic hillocks amble silently, gently caressing the Elephant Ranges .The enthralling and mesmerising Vattavada has caught the imagination of Lenardo Decaprio to echo the Persian poet Amir Khusru who referred to Kashmir as " Agar firdous baroye zameen ast, hami asto, hami asto hami ast”, (If there is a paradise upon earth, it is here, it is here, it is here.)A Coup De Foudre ,a sort of love at first sight.

Walking close to the muddy lanes beside the small thatched huts and shanties, one find the single-room cloister of 150 square meter where Abhimanyu ,his siblings and the parents lived cheek by jowl.Centuries back ,his ancestors fleeing from Madhura on incurring the Kings displeasure, travelled through Kodakkanal ranges and finally have settled in five hamlets called Oors(Shires)on the plains of Kurunji. They also include some who were scared away to the forests by the Mysore Sultans .Abhimanyu belongs to the eighth generation of the people who inherited 400 years of agro- culture and traditions. His father Manoharan who was well versed in Epics and Puranas named the son after the valiant Abhimanyu, the son of Arjuna; the great warrior depicted in Mahabharatha.

Vattavada where he was born is the microcosm of the Tamil culture. The ministers , Mannadiyars, the feudal lords with all their hideous Gothra social moors like Oorukoottam,Ooruvilakku (Social ostracism),clan specific customs, cast-rituals ,taboos and totems are bundled and entrenched in their psyche, that ruled the roost.

Abhimanyu reached home every holiday without fail. Such was the organic bond that glued them together. He helped his parents in the fields, rustled up some food in the kitchen, helped his mother in her daily chores. He was happy that his mousy sister would get hitched shortly. He filled in the applications to the authorities on behalf of the illiterates, held meetings and awareness programmes, organised tournaments and other entertainments to benefit the localites , an assignment right up his alley -with the flag of the progressive youth organisation, the DYFI held high in his arm.

The illiterate and marginalised fellow men rooted in poverty and squalor looked up at him for all their hope of succor. He was Abhimon for them. Abhi was a trail blazer who was born in the rustic community to cut the head of the snake of superstitions ,occult practices and such other blind beliefs and rear them to the brave new world.The blood thirsty vampires had other plans-they drank the life blood of the burgeoning youth. People stood benumbed and horrified, struck in disbelief over the tragedy befallen on the rising star.

Our campuses have always been violent. It always had to do with a particular party being in power.Many national parties have their ‘chapters’ in nearly every university campus in India. Many campuses also have caste or community-based organisations. It is not infrequent that two or more of such groups of students come into serious confrontations with each other.

Slamming student politics in educational institutions, a Division Bench of the High Court headed by Chief Justice Navaniti Prasad Singh, while issuing an order on a contempt of court petition filed by the MES College, Ponnani, had observed that political activities such as dharna, hunger strike and practices such as satyagraha had no place in a constitutional democracy, much less in academic institutions. Educational institutions were meant for imparting education and not politics.Raising serious objections against party politics in the campus, the draft education policy envisages curbs on campus politics and the report summarizes:“The point in short is that it is now essential to review the current situation, and find the balance between free speech and freedom of association guaranteed by the Constitution, the needs of various sections of society, and balance them with the primary purpose for which the universities and institutions of higher learning have been established.

What drives student politics? Is it ideology or the transcient thrill? Do our campuses remain cradles of great ideas anymore?

More loudly do we have sufficient reason to believe that campus politics need to go?

Politics is so deeply entrenched in our system, our economic development – industries, corporates, social welfare schemes, health, education, infrastructure development are all dictated by politics. Student politics, though a great faultline of Indian academics, has umbilical links with national and state level politics. It becomes a launch-pad for new leaders and is much desirable as it gives students a platform to make their voices heard. The absence of politics in college campuses would make the students fossilised, obscurantist, undemocratic and anarchic. It could transform the campuses to landfill sites that act as snug hideouts for the trained viral vectors of racial- terror.

Lyngdoh Committee headed by former election commissioner, Shri J.M Lyngdoh advocated the need to unhinge campuses from political parties but sustain student politics as it was important for building a vigilant citizenry especially in a democratic country like India. Centre for Public Policy Research had conducted a detailed study in “Campus Democracy in India” and was also emphatic on the need to preserve student politics.

In India 70% voters are the youths. If every youngster thinks that politics is a rotten place where angels fear to tread and are shied away, then after some years, politics will be a gerontocracy-a sanctuary of Methuselahs and the patriarchs with moth-eaten ideals.

Ban on campus politics is preposterous and never an answer. We need to set in place the right systems and methods for students to express their thoughts and ideals which is definitely the way ahead.

The Kerala society has expressed their extreme anguish over the ghastly murder apolitically. SanghParivar brigades on the other hand, are trying to fish in troubled waters by being rhetoric over Hindu victimhood and cry foul that the Moslem fundamentalists are targeting Hindus, thereby fanning the religious sentiments aimed at furthering the Hindu-Moslem divide. Like the majority Hindus are averse to Sangh Parivar, the real Islam believers must reject the carnival barkers of Islamic terrorism. It is for the faithfuls to take the bull by its horns and play a pivotal role in fighting terror-officiants of all hues in their respective religion.

The saffron-clad fanatics clamour that they alone can effectively combat the threat of minority communalism and Moslem terrorism. It has to be born in mind that minority consolidation on religious lines emboldens the majority communalism. Secularists believe that in these troubled times of the regime of the majority religion acting on its whims, it s far more imperative to rally against the Sangh Parivar family .

“En Kiliye...En Arumai....Nanpetta Makane...(My young bird,My Son,My son from my womb.),the wail of the mother was heart-wrenching. The boorish philistine who prised out the dreams of the youth, would not feel the pang of parting and that the gash cannot be sewed up easily. They have quenched their thirst with the hot blood of the youngster who came from a remote world to the city to ease the life of his fellow men.

NeelaKKurinhi” is a phenomenon, a rare flower that blooms in every 12 years in July that swaddles the entire hamlet like a blanket of beautiful blue, rather a blue-sea, its waves dancing with the breeze and in the moon-lit nightskys-a scintillating spectacle that enthralled people for generations .

Neelakkurinji is truant this season as if the nature grieves for the dead.

We need to reject any politics that targets people because of race or religion. This isn't a matter of political correctness. It's a matter of understanding what makes us strong. The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith.--Barack Obama

Bismi-the angel

2018-05-04T01:37:00.002-07:00

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
― Leo F. Buscaglia

ith the smile that gloss and glazes like sunbeam-that shines with the aplomb welled up –Anugrah, frail and limp , climbs down the steps of the elementary school closely followed by Phathima Bismi ,his alter ego . Anugragh the boy , afflicted by cerebral palsy is in the lead and the little girl who had been his crutch to lean on from first standard onwards is close to his heels .They wistfully bid adieu to the school as they have to be moving to the higher secondary classes in another school.
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On a rainy june day seven years back, Anugraph came to the school, his body hung on the mom’s shoulder, limbs emaciated and drooping who cannot articulate well. His mother must be near if he has to read, write, drink or to eat. He could not do anything on his own. Cerebral palsy is a loss or inability to control over the body movements; or motor problems in regulating the hand and arms during manual tasks. These losses or impairment of motor functions arise due to abnormal or incomplete brain development .

Bismi watched the mother and the teachers handle him and now she could tend him by herself. The boys mother, being pregnant for the second time stopped coming to school. When Manikandan ,his father comes to school with Anugrah on his bycycle ,Bismi will be ready to take charge of her friend . With books in one hand and the boy half her weight saddled on the left of the wasp waist, she would ramble round through the gardens, class rooms. The tender girl treated the boy as if her own little brother-assisted him in class portions, washed his hands, fed him -took him to the lavatrine, helped him hygienic-all by herself as a mature women above her age. She nestled him close till his third standard, thenceforth he learnt to walk himself.

Bismi has lifted the differently abled boy to the full of the joys of spring, who in most likelihood would have tethered to his own world. When he ran she also ran with him lest he should fall -a bonhomie as scarce as hen’s teeth beyond the cliché of cast, creed or colour. Now Anugrah can walk without fear of fall. He slowly regained the articulative skills. He studies, dances, write storeys and even take part in school dramas. The teaching faculty did all the care and help to the boy. The doctors attest that it was the self-confidence imparted by Bismi which alone took him through the ordeal while the presence of the caring teachers and parents created congenial atmosphere .The solace and succour that Bismi brought in was a matter of astonishment for her teachers ,students and the family .She has become a model .By the time the boy reached 7thbstandard in the Parambinkadavu Mommed Abdulrahman Memorial Upper Primary School ,the pupil were ready at any time to take care of the boy. The school provides all necessary background for the differently abled students to complete the primary classes.The children hogged the media lime light and the external world took note.

UNICEF recognised the report on them. When the news got viral, not to give a toss about, Bismi as usual was with his friend around the water-tapes and in the play-ground .He grew up and need not be lapped up or spoon fed now. But still she needs to be vigilant whether he would fall and get his limbs cracked. The parents of a differently abled boy have to go through a difficult patch. But thanks to Bismi, his mom had to come to school very sparingly.The mother said:”Let all god’s grace be showered on this little angel. She is such a child with all the love of God.”

They have now to move to Payimbra Govt High School to continue studies. The mother sighs; “My mind whispers to me -Bismi shall still be there with my child. I leave the hope in the hands of the girl. .”

In the night on the eve of the final exam ,the boy amidst his restlessness told the mother:”What a nice thing it could be if there is 8th standard in the school.” Prof: Muthukad the leading magician and inspiration speech maker ,also Unicef media adviser and the most revered Catholic Bava Basallius Marthoma Paulose came to visit the school.

Sri.Muthukad was all praise for Bismi and said that she is the embodiment of commiseration for human life. He reminisces the question asked by Almustaffa the main protagonist, in the prose poem ‘ Prophet’ from Kahlil Gibran ;” who is God?”

Muthukad has his answer: ” One who loves the other not for his benefit, the one that artlessly bears compassion in the eyes-I can see that empathy in her eyes.” The educational expenses will now be borne by the magician. He is also in the process of involving the social justice ministry to take up the education and medical expenses of Anugrah.

The catholic Bishop reached Kakkodi to grace Anugrah and Bismi and their family. The Bishop has inaugurated the road construction initiative of ‘The residence Association’ that runs in front of the house of Anugrah.The Gram Panchayath also sanctioned one and a half lakh rupees for the initiative.

“True empathy requires that you step outside your own emotions to view things entirely from the perspective of the other person.” Anonymous.

(The article is originally published in Mathrubhumi, a malayalam daily Weekend edition by Ms.KC Rahna-She is available at rehana.kc@gmail.com)

The new cartography of terror.

2018-04-19T07:21:00.000-07:00

M
aai,/I sent the horses trotting,/And they found their way back home./But, I couldn't.
My legs that you thought were/Swift as those of a deer,/They froze./Maai, they froze./But I sent the horses home./The purple flowers,
The yellow butterflies,/They stood there helpless./While I sent the horses back home.
Maai,/Tell Baba that I know,/I know,/I know he tried./I heard him say out my name,/I heard him repeat it loud./But,/I was sleepy Maai,/I was tired./Them monsters,/They hurt me bad.
Strange as it may seem to you,/Maai,/It feels like your warmth now.

The #JusticeForAsifa message on my whatsApp wall reads thus.

We have failed an eight year old and the whole humanity too!!

The brutal rape and savagery of an-eight-year-old ,perhaps even more diabolical than Nirbhaya, in Kathua district of Jammu and Kashmir ,over 1000 km from Unnao, have boiled up a nation-wide outrage. A Bakherwal nomadic Muslim tribal girl went missing on January 10 from their camp in Rasana village in Kathua, 60 Km from Jammu where she stayed with her family. She was abducted while grazing horses in the forest and was sedated over and over before being ravished by six men, inside and outside a Devasthan(Not to be confused with a Temple, Devstan is -“kul aka clan-deities abode“ where only the families to whom it belong, perform the ritual). She was tortured to death on January 14- the body to be recovered from Rasana forest in Hira Nagar on January 17, a week after she went missing. On January 23, A week later,on January 23 ,After the body was found, and the J&K government handed over the case to the SIT of the Crime Branch.

Three months passed. On April 9, the Crime Branch of the Jammu and Kashmir Police, which took over the investigation, filed a charge sheet in court.
The rape was committed on purpose to bully the Bakherwal community in to decamping the suburb for which the 8-year- old girl has became essentially the ‘soft target. Bakerwals are one of 12 scheduled tribes in J&K with a population of just over 60,000-Muslims by belief. They are nomadic herdsmen, a floating population with seasonal earnings on their live stocks. They drift to the Valley and Ladakh in summer and shifts back to the forests of Jammu in winter. Walking over four months a year in search of grazing grounds, they stay afloat, pitch tents where they find fit to stay.

President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday said the Kathua gang rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in Kathua earlier this year was shameful. “After 70 years of independence, such an incident occurring in any part of the country is shameful,” he said during his visit to Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Trust University in Jammu today.

True to his characteristic silence amidst furious tweets on irrelevant events, on Friday evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the inauguration of BabaSaheb Ambedkar memorial,New Delhi ,condemned the Kathua and unnao incidents and declared; “I want to assure the nation that no culprits will be spared, complete justice will be done. Our daughters will definitely get justice”. Close to its heals ,the two J&K ministers under cloud got the sack for taking part in the rally in support of Kathua rape accused,averting a coalition crisis.

Later at an official visit to the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday, 18 April, he addressed the 'Bharat ki Baat, Sabke Saath' programme at the iconic Central Hall Westminster in London and referred to the Kathua and said there should be no politics over rape. ” A rape is a rape. How can we tolerate this exploitation of our daughters? “

Kathua incident is a crime against humanity: Rahul Gandhi tweeted.

Earlier, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, in an interview to a news channel, had stated that the culprits in both Kathua and Unnao would be punished and justice done to the victims. Mehbooba Mufti took to Twitter earlier and assured that her government will ensure that no other child will ever face such brutality and atrocity. Terming as "horrific" the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl, UN chief Antonio Guterres expressed hope that the authorities will bring perpetrators of the brutal crime to justice.

Seven persons accused in the case have been charged with crimes under Sections 302, 376, 201 and 120-B of the Penal Code.

The JK Police’s crime branch in its 18 page charge sheet has accused Sanji Ram, a former revenue official and caretaker of the Devasthan in Hiranagar where the victim was allegedly confined, He is the prime accused, the conspirator and mastermind of the abduction, rape and murder of the little girl. The charge sheet says that it was Sanji Ram, who delegated the juvenile nephew, his son Vishal and their acquaintant Parvesh with kidnapping the-8-year-old. Two special police officers Deepak Khajuria and Surinder Kumar were also involved in the crime. Two other police officials, Head Constable Tilak Raj and Sub Inspector Anand Dutta were bribed to give a leg up in the crime. Separate charge sheet was filed on Tuesday on the role of the juvenile, who cannot be publicly named according to the law. Ram surrendered on March 20 after his son was arrested from Uttar Pradesh a day earlier.

On January 11, six days before the child's body was recovered , the juvenile phoned his cousin Jangotra and asked him to return from Meerut where he was studying if he wanted to "gratify his lust", the charge sheet stated. According to the investigation, Khajuria the SPO also reached the culvert near the forest where she was taken to eliminate, told them to wait as "he wanted to rape her before she is killed". The charge sheet said the girl was once again gang-raped and later killed by the juvenile.

All eight are under arrest.

The Jammu High Court Bar Association called for a bandh on Wednesday demanding that the investigation be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Khatua bar-chief Kirthi Bhushan Mahajan said that duress and undue force was used on the local population in Rasana and all these suspicions and doubts could be cleared by a CBI enquiry.

According to Shoeb Alam, standing counsel for J&K, “The police team was heckled by the lawyers and prevented from submitting the charge sheet before the Chief Judicial Magistrate court in Kathua.” The 3 member bench of SC headed by the Chief Justice Dipak Misra took cognizance of the developments and said that impeding the process of law “affects the delivery of justice”

Hindu Ekta Manch a platform set up, a week before the body was found in the forest, by affiliates of the Sangh Parivar under the leadership of BJP state secretary Vijay Kumar , has been consistent in support of the arrested policeman, demanding transfer of the case to the CBI. The main accused Sanjhi Ram is the founding member of Hindu Ekta Manch. Addressing the Manch-led protest gathering, state Industries and Commerce Minister Chander Parkash Ganga hit out at the police for the arrest .“ We will not allow this jungle raj, under which people are picked up at will. Forest Minister Lal Singh questioned why the probe was not being handed over to the CBI. The protests demanding SanjiRam’s release evoked a sharp reaction from chief minister Mehbooba Muft who tweeted; ” Appalled by the marches & protests in defence of the recently apprehended rapist in Kathua. Also horrified by their use of our national flag in these demonstrations, this is nothing short of desecration.” The Bharatiya Janata Party leader Chander Prakash Ganga, who was seen at a rally organised in support of the accused claimed that he was asked to attend the event by the state party chief Sat Sharma, a report said.

All over the world, nomadic communities have always been feared, discredited and abused by communities who live in settled habitats.The purported motive behind the assault –that to shy away the nomads from their neighbourhood does not hold water as they had never been a perceived threat to the social fabric of the region. Vrinda Karat rightly asks;”Whereas in every other case the Sangh Parivar has been campaigning for the abolition of Article 370, in the case of the Bakherwal and Gujjar communities the Sangh Parivar has taken shelter under Article 370 to deprive these communities of their rights on forest land under the Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006. Thus whereas under the FRA the rights of the Bakherwals on forest land would have to be recognised, Article 370 prevents its automatic applicability in Jammu and Kashmir”

The system is highly loaded against the oppressed .All hate crimes are built over the superstructure of community rights and religion. To superimpose the crime on the tussle over forest rights would only boil down the gravity of the brutality brought upon the little girl. The investigation must be pursued for the hate crime that it is- just not be tied down to the community’s rights. It is sad, that the bogey of likely demographical shift to the benefit of Muslims is utterly a warped logic to deny citizenship rights to the nomads.

The BJP rabble rousers in the ministry have communalised the barbarity beyond norms for political point-scoring. It took 4 months for the grisly murder to become public, the delay smelt of the shenanigans of the political genie and media remiss. India has a dubious notoriety as a nation where rapists are shielded and feasted by the institution while the victims are named, shamed and shattered.

If a Hindu girl is raped in Bengal liberals are left with a frog in their throat, when it happens to a Muslim girl in UP secularists do a hatchet job to paint the saffron black. The fumbling of Kathua horror by the BJP is helping radicals in Kashmir to whip up anti-India sentiments. By bringing a Pakistani-shade for the rape the BJP leaders have unwittingly made a mockery of themselves, betraying their knavishness and folly. The political discourse brought on the dissection table is being dictated and vitiated by cancerous, communal and cast cliques to score political points.

The Kathua can be a litmus test for India’s democratic justice delivery credos. Child rapes are as regular as clockwork and can happen at predictable intervals at any nook and cranny of the country. Kathua case begs to be taken to its logical conclusion. The child victim must get justice. Otherwise we would have failed her and the nation. Malefic machismo has engulfed the nation.

Her adopted father had lost two children in a bus accident around the time she was born. He cried and begged his sister to give him the little girl. He said raising her would take some of the grief away. After a year, the sister relented and gave her youngest child to her brother. They lived together for the six months spent in Kargil. During the winter, the two families moved in different directions , one to Samba and other to Kathua. The biological mother’s eyes well up as she returns to where the horses were grazing. “My little girl liked horses” ,she reminisced.

The police never bothered them, nor did the people in the towns and villages they passed through. Their only fear was wild animals but now they have to fear people also.” I could have found some peace had an animal attacked her, but how can human beings be that cruel to do what they did to her?” she laments.
The grief-stricken family of, quietly packed their haversacks, saddled their horses and have set off on their annual journey to the pasture lands deep in the hills of the state, with the hope that justice will be done in the case. It’s an annual ritual, this trek with grazing livestock ,through various districts in Jammu province to Kashmir and Ladakh. They do it every summer. They have not abandoned the hamlet.

The whatsApp message ends with heart-wrenching swansong;

It doesn't hurt anymore./The blood has dried/And it looks like the purple blossoms/That swayed with me in the meadows./It doesn't hurt, Maai.
Maai,/The monsters are still out there./And there are stories too./Don't listen to them Maai,
Gut wrenching and agonizing they are/And a lot you've gone through./Maai,/Lest I forget,/There's a temple there/Where lives a goddess.
Thank her,/For I think it's she who helped,/The horses find their way back home.

Soon apples will be in season, she loved apples.

“It often happens that the real tragedies of life occur in such an inartistic manner that they hurt us by their crude violence, their absolute incoherence, their absurd want of meaning, their entire lack of style. They affect us just as vulgarity affects us. They give us an impression of sheer brute force, and we revolt against that.
Sometimes, however, a tragedy that possesses artistic elements of beauty crosses our lives. If these elements of beauty are real, the whole thing simply appeals to our sense of dramatic effect. Suddenly we find that we are no longer the actors, but the spectators of the play. Or rather we are both. We watch ourselves, and the mere wonder of the spectacle enthralls us.”

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

Updates

Raipur:Seven-year-old girl sexually assaulted in school
By ANI | Published: 21st April 2018 08:56 AM | Last Updated: 21st April 2018 08:56 AM | A+A A- |
With the ongoing Unnao and Kathua rape cases, the Indian social media has been abuzz with the words - "rape horror".. Massive protests are being held across the country for demanding death penalty for those accused of raping minors.
RAIPUR:
In yet another case of crime against minors, a seven-year-old girl was allegedly sexually assaulted at Raipur's Campion School. Meanwhile, the police said that they were investigating the matter and were examining CCTV footages of the school. An FIR was lodged for the same.
The president of Child Right Commission, Prabha Dubey, told ANI, "I have spoken to the girl personally. She is saying that a 'bhaiya' had allegedly molested her. We asked the peon of the school about the undergarment, to which she replied that she had thrown away the undergarment since the girl had urinated on it. I will constitute a team to investigate the matter."
Bihar:13-year-old girl kills self after father rapes her
By PTI | Published: 21st April 2018 01:57 AM | Last Updated: 21st April 2018 01:57 AM | A+A A- |
BETTIAH:
A 30-year-old man was arrested today for allegedly raping his 13-year-old daughter following which she committed suicide in Bihar's West Champaran district, an official said. The girl's body was found yesterday hanging from the ceiling at her house in a village which comes under the jurisdiction of Majhaulia police station, Superintendent of Police Jayant Kant said.
Police sources said an FIR was lodged on the basis of the statement of the mother of the girl. A panchayat meeting was held at the request of the girl and her mother on her sexual exploitation around a week ago, and her father was rebuked at the meeting, the sources said. After the meeting, the girl was mentally disturbed and she ran away from the village on Wednesday. She was brought back by family members but after a few days she committed suicide, the sources said.
3-year-old girl raped allegedly by neighbour in Madhya Pradesh
By ANI | Published: 26th April 2018 11:36 AM | Last Updated: 26th April 2018 11:36 AM | A+A A- |
CHHATARPUR;
A 3-year-old girl was allegedly raped on Wednesday night in Madhya Pradesh's Chhatarpur district. The incident took place when the accused neighbour allegedly sneaked into the girl's house and found the victim alone in her house. The accused was arrested immediately after the incident.
"We have registered the case and the accused has been arrested. Further investigation underway," said Superintendent of Police (SP), RR Parihar. The girl was admitted to the district hospital at Chhatarpur where she is undergoing treatment. (ANI)

The Candy smelling Bappa

2018-04-11T05:55:00.000-07:00

“Our soul longs to be of service in some way. It's why we are here. If you weren't meant to touch the world in some way, you wouldn't be here. What act of service calls to you? Even the smallest thing has an effect in eternity.”
― Eileen Anglin

A
re you marooned at City Bu Stand in Kasaragod? Do you find no transport to your remote village in the night? Sathar could be somewhere near to take you home.

His father would not come back. He knows it too well but hops on hope:”Some day, he would be spotted in town at a wee hour. I need to take him home.”

In June it does not rain but pours in these part of the country .Sathar summons back the vivid memory of an early June day in 1979, when as a kid clinging to his Bappa’s fingers was on their way to the Subah at Talangara mosque. After the Subah Namaskar he followed his father to the railway station waving him off to Bombay. Hassainar,his bappa(father) was a sailor with MV Kairali ,a merchant vessel owned by Kerala Shipping corporation. It was enroute for Rostock in Germany crewed by a team of 51 aboard. The ship was lost at mid sea moving at a good clip to Jibutha in Africa for fuelling. There were no news of shipwreck that left the family with faint promise of return. Rumours had it that the ship was sunk either in a PLI operation or hijacked by sea-pirates.

Hassainar was dear to the villagers and the family alike. It was his second marriage to Sathar’s mother Rukhiya. They were Darby and Jhon. When he was home, it was gaiety and merrymaking like a wedding day. The separation was a rude shock to his mother and after two years she died nursing the agony. Sathar stopped school going. He helped his uncle in laterite-wall-constructions. He forgot his father. Life was a treadmill.

Years after, when Sathar became a father, when his own children grew up before him he remembered his father. He began to ask; ’’Uppa, where are you now?” The thought that his father would one day turn up in the town was poignant and eerily evocative. He ran his scooter to the nooks and corners of the town, to the railway station, to the bus stops hoping his father would one day show up in the night of the town. During such wistful wait for his father he would ask those strangers stranded in the night where they wanted to go and volunteer a ride. He took them to their destinations without recompense.

Sathar once stumbled upon a man in the bus stand at midnight with his six year old boy –a cancer patient. With them on the pillion he rode 70 Km in that night through the rugged terrain to the remote destination, telling them that he is also on to the same place. His method is to accost the estranged passenger, ask where he wanted to go and reassure the poor mortal that he is also going to the same place and will only be pleased if he would not mind sharing the pillion. The heartfelt words like:”let God grace you” are the fuel for his two wheeler .He has a method in his madness. Safe home, he would say the truth that the journey was actually meant as a help. It was a make-belief, a clever ruse else they would fight shy off and resign. The child’s father was so happy that he embraced him, tears of gratitude run down his cheeks.

Another night a man spotted running on the road in panic was rushed to the Railway station on his scooter. The man’s wife was to undergo a surgery next day at Chennai. He was to deposit a tidy sum of money before the surgery and was in the town to scrape together enough cash .When they reached the station the west Coast was ready to leave.

Sathar was there to help many –whose name was even not known to him. He did not wish anything as return favour.

In yet another night a Muslim scholar on his way to Sa-Adiya,Deli Arabic college was left high and dry in the city stand. Sathar took him to the college. The Ustad was persistently looking for a quid pro quo. Sathar after much coaxing accepted 1Re coin as a token-the token of love. The routine for years gets intercepted scarcely, only when he is confined to home due to fever or is away on inescapable preoccupations. On Hartal days he would roam in the town looking for the marooned.

He lands in the town with tank-full and a few bottles of petrol in reserve. This is the fifth scooter in the love-route, having served one lakh kilometres and had developed considerable wear and tear. He plans to purchase a new one when all the monthly instalments are cleared.

Sathar is known to all the beat-police in town. They used to warn him over the risks in driving in the night for long and remote hamlets .Sathar leaves his life in the hands of God. There are three in his vehicle –The pillion passenger, himself and the God.

Not just well-wish and prayer alone, but he had to fair share of bitter experiences galore. Once a youth half way to the Railway station got off and happily walked away .When he searched his pocket for the 500 Rs fresh note he kept ,he found that he was pick pocketed. Sathar did not nurse any grudge. His penury, his incomplete house on two cents or the liabilities did not deter him from the noble cause.

Once he took a man in the lurch at KSRTC bus stand who wanted to reach a remote place called Buttikadavu ,a good 35 Km away from the stand. On reaching the destination, as being wont to him, he disclosed that he has biked these distances only to help him. He was invited to stay in his house for the night which he promptly declined .They exchanged their mobile numbers. On the way back he was intercepted by a gang of thugs who wanted to know his mission there. As he could not recollect the name of the place where he left the stranger-friend they took their dagger out. He revved the engine up, sped past through the narrow alleys- clutching his life in his hands, the gang being close behind. Somehow he took asylum in a house beside the road. The Battikadavu passenger was rung up and the man came with his associates for his safety. Sathar remembers of similar incidents in the course of his adventures.

There will usually be ten to fifteen people in a day left helpless, as without transport. There will be someone who is disabled or a man who is desperate to reach to his place, whether it be a short hop or long rides. For these men he waits in the night.

“The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was: 'If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?' But...the good Samaritan reversed the question: 'If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

Courtesy to an article written by Rubin Joseph in Mathrubhumi Malayalam daily on 8th April 2018

Bystander Apathy kills....

2018-03-04T05:08:00.002-08:00

W
e watch ,holding breath in awe, the amazing videos on YouTube and in Geographical Channels- of animals saving other animal lives. Baboon saving a deer or an impala from cheetah. Beer help saves a bird from water, elephant fights the lion to save buffalo, so on and so forth. In a dramatic confrontation on the plains of Africa-shot on one vedio in Kruger National Park- we see a herd of buffalo, whose natural born enemy is the lion, save an elephant calf to safety, chasing away a group of female lions .

It happens in the animal world when a co-inhabitant is caught in conflict with a much heftier enemy, a divine common thread binds them, even on the face of an assured damage.

Saji Anto, 46, a native of Kalluvettukuzhi Veedu, Nellankara of Thrissur district in Kerala fell from the fourth floor of the hotel in Cochin where he had been staying. Police said that he felt dizzy while standing on the terrace and plummeted on to the busy MG Road below , his legs hitting a parked two-wheeler before he collapsed. The CCTV footage showed people gathering around him, vehicles streaming, but none cared to take him to a hospital.

Ranjini Ramanand, a lawyer practising at the High Court for the last 23 years happened to be on the spot while on her way to the metro station along with her daughter. She desperately sought help from others to lift him up and shift to a nearby hospital. To her utter dismay, no one bothered to call a vehicle or help her take Saji to hospital despite repeated requests, Ranjini said that she saw youngsters who were not willing to extend a helping hand to the victim . The lawyer finally got help from a couple travelling on a four-wheeler. Saji with injuries to his cervical spine was shifted to the Government General Hospital and later to the trauma care unit at the Kottayam Medical College . Ranjini got accolades from the Kerala Assembly for her timely intervention to save the man's life. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan took it to social media to appreciate her, where he also expressed his shock over the muted response of the passers-by. Actor Jayasurya in a Facebook post congratulated her and spoke his mind to bow down to her.

This is not a one-off incidence .The crowd insensitivity does not limit to Kerla alone. We as a race are desensitised bystanders to give no two hoots to the dire need of the victims of violence and accident. People are too edgy, stuck up in the warped logic that works up cravenness and fights shy of the citizens duty-a breed of fascinated spectators, not conscientious enough to help the needy.

Psychiatrist Dr Harish Shetty calls it a complete collapse of the community consciousness. The "bystander effect" that forbids onlookers from taking action, he says, is typical Indian psyche. "We are taught from a very young age not to meddle in others' affairs. When it comes to helping someone who is not a part of your family or friends' circle, people tend to row back. “Taking a stand and rocking the boat is not part of our psyche," he said. He likens the "chronic disaster syndrome" that

India is going through to psychopathic liberation where people wreak havoc in a place stricken by disaster. Just as thefts are seen in places ravaged by earthquakes or wars, there is a collapse of the cultural superego, which is otherwise an inhibitor in these situations.

NDTV reports this shocking public apathy on Feb 02,2017 headlined: Lying In Blood, Karnataka Teen Cried For Help. They Filmed Him Instead. On February 1, 18-year-old Anwar Ali, whose bicycle was hit by a bus, bled to death on a road in Karnataka under the watch of several bystanders . It was only two days before, Mahesh Kumar, a 38-year-old police officer was left bleeding , lay mauled in a police jeep for nearly an hour after a road crash in Mysore. The people stood encircled but did nothing to take him to the hospital. These recent episodes explain the bystander responses in big cities to helpless victims in need of urgent reaction.

Aravindra Pandey the Nirbhayas friend recounts the 90 minutes ordeal in those decisive moments on the fateful night of December :
"After raping Jyoti, the attackers threw us out. We were lying on the road stripped of clothes. I tried to get up and wave at the vehicles and pedestrians in transit. Some cars stopped, saw us and left in a jiffy. Then the highway patrol van spotted us and we were taken to the hospital. People kept staring at me in the hospital.”

A few days later-true to the irony - half of Delhi were on the roads-candle lit, seeking justice for Jyoti chanting in processions ''Saari Delhi yahan hai, Sheila Dixit kahan hai"

In 2013, Kanhaiya's wife and infant daughter were hit by a vehicle in Jaipur. For almost one hour, he huddled their bodies to his chest-begging for help. Nobody stopped and let them die. The media brawled and hollered at the abysmal fall in public passivity. It shrieked and screamed:“ India wants to know why its people have become so unblushing and insensitive”.

Vinay Jindal In July 2015, bled to death after an accident in east Delhi. His death sparked a furore that spurred the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ask people to come in the aid of road victims. But, we never learn.

A 24-year old Infosys tech worker S Swathi was murdered at a busy railway station in Chennai on June 24. Ramkumar, who had allegedly been stalking Swathi, hacked her to death with a sickle and calmly walked away as horror-struck passersby watched and did nothing. Ramkumar was arrested a week later and allegedly committed suicide in prison on September 18. She died simply because no one came to help. All stood frozen watching for two hours.

Indians are voyeurs; they seldom help victims on road mishap. In countries like France, Germany, Belgium, failing to provide help and passive attitude is a criminal offence. A bystander overlooking an accident victim is liable for imprisonment up to five years and a hefty fine. However, in India, it continues to remain a directive.

Such a tepid crowd response, doing little on the face of heinous atrocities ,even to raise an alarm is despicable. There are also cases where bystanders produced videos as a person was committing suicide, a lower caste man was being flogged and a victim was getting molested.
According to the Law Commission of India, 50% of those killed in road accidents could have been saved had timely assistance been rendered to them. India has just one percent of the world's vehicles. Yet we contribute to 10 percent of the global deaths in accidents. Fifty percent victims die of injuries that could have been averted.

Savelife Foundation , an NGO working on road safety, in a survey in 2013,reveals that 74 percent of Indians will fail to help an accident victim even in the company of other bystanders. On the basis of a national study of past cases conducted by it, the foundation submits that three out of four people in India hesitated to come to the rescue of a road accident victims. Even when indifference can be one reason, 88% of this apathy attributed to the perceived procedural harangues one might face at the hands of police and the hospital authorities. These hassles include intimidation by police, unnecessary detention at hospitals and prolonged legal formalities.

Bystander Apathy – Explains Why People At Accidents Or Emergencies Do Nothing

Psychiatrists and social scientists have delved into the human tendency to remain inert at incidents of street violence, a hit-and-run case, bikers snatching chains of passers-by, eve-teasing and molestation of women and children and harassment of senior citizens. This ‘looking the other way’ when help is desperately needed by victims of street violence is termed the ‘bystander effect.’

Jhon Darley and Bibb Latane , two American psychologists have been the first to coin the term “Bystander Effect in 1968. They conducted a series of lab experiments to examine how the presence of others influences people's helping behaviour in an emergency situation based on a murder which occurred in New York City in 1964.

On March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was murdered in front of her home. She parked her car a few feet from her apartment when all of a sudden, a man named Winston Moseley hunted her down and gored to death. Kitty screamed for help and a neighbour responded shouting at the criminal. Winston decamped in his car leaving the girl crawling towards her apartment. Minutes later he returned to the scene. After finding her lying almost unconscious where he left her , he stabbed the already wounded Kitty several times more. He stole the money of the victim, sexually assaulted and fled.

When the news of this tragic crime hit the stands, there was much debates on the selfishness and indifference of people in general, and in particular of the people who live in big cities. Darley and Latane found that the reason people did not help in an emergency was due to a social psychological concept is known as ‘diffusion of responsibility’, also known as the ‘bystander effect’ or ‘bystander apathy’.

Two reasons were offered to explain the bystander apathy effect. First is diffusion of responsibility. This occurs when other people think that another person will intervene and as a result, they feel less responsible.

The second explanation is pluralistic ignorance. This refers to the mentality that since everyone else is not reacting to the emergency; my personal help is not needed. Seeing the inaction of others will lead to the thought that the emergency is not that serious as compared to perception when he is alone.
Diffusion of responsibility suggests that the greater the number of witnesses at the scene of an emergency the less likely the victims are to receive help. This is because each person that is present feels less responsible to do something because he or she feels that someone else will do it. On the other hand, if only one person is present at the scene of an emergency, that individual is most likely to help, because he or she feels responsible since there is no one else around.
There are also other factors that contribute to the bystanders not assisting in an accident or emergency, including ambiguity and cohesiveness.
Ambiguity refers to the sense of feeling unknown in a crowd, so the individual thinks (consciously or unconsciously) that if I do not assist, no one will know because no one here knows me. Cohesiveness means feeling a part of a united whole. So, during that incident and for that brief period, individuals who may never have met before, subconsciously bond together; looking in awe at the sight together, talking together, exclaiming together, and so on. So, if one person does nothing, everyone else is likely to do nothing – because they feel like a united whole, moving together (or not), and in synchrony.
So, in the scenario above, individuals may have stood by without helping because each expected that someone else would help, resulting in ‘bystander apathy’ (no one doing anything to help). visit: http://www.dynacii.com

The bystander effect is further being compounded by the gadget era. We are a generation of cell-fishes ,smart cookies chained in smart phones, tablets, ipads, and the like and are drowned in social media : Facebook, Skype, Instagram, Whatsapp and others. The young in particular revels in capturing the moment, making it ‘viral’ , showcase it and feel proud of the ‘likes’ it could fetch.

According to the Law Commission of India, 50% of those killed in road accidents could have been saved had timely assistance been rendered to them.
A bench comprising justices V. Gopala Gowda and Arun Mishra directed the Centre to give wide publicity to the guidelines for the protection of Good Samaritans at the hands of the police or any other authority which clearly stipulate that people who help victims of road accidents or other calamities are not harassed in any way. The decision of the Supreme Court granting legal teeth to the guidelines assumes significance because the Centre has always claimed that it has found it difficult to enforce guidelines in the absence of any statutory backing. With the court order, the guidelines and standard operating procedures have become binding in all states and union territories. The guidelines are an interim measure to deal with the issue till the Centre enacts appropriate legislation –but are also a crucial step in that direction. In order to ensure the effective implementation of the guidelines and SOPs, it is imperative that a comprehensive Good Samaritan law is enacted at the Central and state level,” the foundation said. Such a legislation, it added, would give legal backing to the guidelines, address the concerns of the Good Samaritans and protect them from all forms of harassment. The panel, appointed by the apex court in 2014, made 12 major recommendations in all, including setting up of State Road Safety Councils, evolving a protocol for the identification.

The guidelines were later approved by the Supreme Court and published in the Gazette of India Para 1 of Section 1 of the notification dated May 12, 2015. The guidelines clearly directs all hospitals, police and other authorities that “a bystander or good Samaritan including an eyewitness of a road accident may take an injured person to the nearest hospital, and the bystander or good Samaritan should be allowed to leave immediately after furnishing address by the eyewitness and no question shall be asked to such bystander or good Samaritan.

The fear remains rooted and we wheel out the same arguments even after a year has passed since the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways issued guidelines for the protection of Good Samaritans, as per Supreme Court’s directives.

With androids in everyone’s pocket it is not a big deal to call for an ambulance or inform the the police. But we would selfie, showcase them on facebook and waltz in our profound indignation on social media instead of taking the timely intervention. This is the case even though the Supreme Court explicitly issued guidelines in March 2016 to protect bystander-helpers or good Samaritans who aid victims in need. Duty to rescue laws force you to rescue someone and Good Samaritan laws prevent you from being held liable for problems

The dingy ,stinky "Other"

2018-03-02T08:08:00.001-08:00

M
adhu a 27-year-old tribal youth has been brutally assaulted and lynched to death on Thursday evening by the irate upscales of Kaduku Manne ooru , a hamlet in Attapady region in Palghat district, Kerala.He is alleged to have stolen some grocery from the neighbourhood provision shops .

Madhu the tribesman was a frail, illiterate, mentally ill and a destitute living in a cave on the fringes of the forest. He was hounded and made to walk 4 miles from his hideout with the heavy load on his shoulder-beaten body-mind all the way, battered, his ribs splintered and tied by the worn-out rag he wore. He was handed over to the police and declared brought dead on reaching the Government Tribal Specialty Hospital at Kottathara. The frenzied mob feted in the selfie - the photographs of which emerged in the social media- that flew the netizens off the handle. The incident had sent shock waves across the state.

Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan described Madhu’s death: ”This heinous act is a blot on Kerala’s progressive society. But I want to assure you that strict action will be taken at the earliest against all the culprits to ensure that such crimes, especially against people from communities that were long marginalised, are not repeated."

Finance Minister Isaac wrote an emotional post. It said: “The innocence in Madhu’s eyes and the images of the merciless mob that killed him would haunt Kerala for a long time. Let’s stop talking about the high social and political consciousness of the state."

Malayalam superstar Mammootty has taken to social media to condemn the incident: “I will not call him adivasi, but my brother. The mob has killed my younger brother. If you think as a human being, Madhu is your son and brother. Above that, he is a citizen like any of us, who has his rights. One who steals food to feed his hunger shouldn’t be called a thief; poverty is created by society,” Mammootty wrote in Malayalam.

Author KR Meera came down heavily on the attackers, sharing a poem that she wrote on the incident: “Next time, ensure that you take more people along, burst crackers outside the cave and threaten him. And when he comes out all frightened, catch him with a trap. Tie him upside down, collect water in a big vessel and light fire to it. From the carry bag, take the rice and boil it. Light the beedis and wait.

Actor Joy Mathew also took to Facebook to condemn Madhu’s killing, saying that the state of Kerala must hang its head in shame."

“They beat him to death, accusing him of robbing a shop for items worth Rs 200. Since Madhu is not part of any political party, there will be no one to fight for him. But we should all feel ashamed thinking about that Malayali who took a selfie and celebrated, just moments before Madhu was beaten to death,” Joy wrote.

Social activist Rajendra Prasad, president of Thampu, an NGO that works with Adivasis in Attappady, said Madhu’s death should be considered as part of broader social ills. He said several Adivasis in Attappady had become mentally ill after they lost land and became jobless. “Madhu’s Kurumba tribe has close to 4,000 members and starvation is a big issue among them. Most of them live in the forest, and come to the plains once in a week to buy food.”

Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha leader Geethanandan said that Advasis in Attappady were vulnerable to attacks.Settlers are all too powerful and they have the support of the powers-that-be.

Adivasis once constituted 90% of Attappady’s population (1951 census), but their numbers steadily started dwindling with the arrival of settlers from across Kerala and Tamil Nadu. According to the 2011 census, Adivasis comprise just 34% of the population in the area now.

Adivasis in Attappady mainly belong to three tribes – the Irulas, Kurumbas and Mudugas – each with their own distinctive lifestyle, culture and food habits. The Kurumbas are found closer to the forests while others occupy the plains. Each community lives in colonies of 60 to 100 families known as oorus or hamlets. At present, Attappady has 192 Adivasi hamlets.

Madhu has been victimised by the civil society. who stalk on the tribals and foray into their natural habitats and bereft them of their natural life. They religiously make sure that the myriads of poverty alleviation schemes of both central and state agencies do not reach the needy. The enormous tribal welfare funds are brazenly syphoned off by the interlopers, politicians and the bureaucrats with impunity. They prescribe the mores and delivers their justice system to them. The civilised society cannot be spared from the atrocity inflicted on the youth and does not qualify for remorse. The incidence explains the pathetic and hopeless tribal trauma.

The tribal hamlets are infested with infant deaths, mal-nutrition, liquor and starvation. They hog occasional media glare when deaths visit them and soon be swooned into oblivion. It is shocking that such things happen in the digital era of 21^st century. Illegal settlings, deforestation, embezzling tribal welfare schemes and flagrant exploitation have kept them historically sidelined and silenced. The mainstream that swaggers on being civilised has the bloodstains on their palm. When the galling storeys of the death of the marginalised ‘other’ come to the fore, we delightfully devour it with the raging lexicon of the debates of the social scientists and brainstorming sessions of the intellectuals.

The society needs to make a reality check, an audit on the fallen trees that made the wooden crosses stand tall in the settlements, the ghost of denuded forests and the razed hillocks, broken-eyed rivulets, hunger-stricken stomachs still there. The Government is duty bound to rein-in the crowd that exterminates the ‘other’. Much pep-talking, pampering and keeping in good humour do not salvage the situation.

The painful death of the Adivasi youth that occasioned by the hate-game on the ‘other’ played by the mainstream raises many a question. Also, It gives us the window –at this historic juncture- to make reparations.

Do the mainstream and the Governmental machinery have the grit and grace to look in the face of it?

Renowned Malayalam poet and humanist SuagathaKumari laments:” We taught them to beg, boozed them, dazzled them with Ghanja, tried to corrupt their women with impunity. We were valorous, unkind, thick-skinned and impious”

We dodged the onus of making his stomach full, but gave him bellyful of sermons, homily and platitudes-his just desserts -and consigned him to the netherworld.

Attappadi is the African replica of the Gods own country. We are in the American route of the annihilation of the aborigines.Attappady, the tribal belt in Kerala– a blot on the glorious human development records of the state.-too big for the britches.

Malnutrition, birth defects and poor maternal health continue to afflict the tribals, with a recent report putting infant death toll at 14 in the last year. The report said, in 2016, eight children died of birth defects in the region.Health officials confirm that fetal deaths also remain high in the region and six deaths have been reported so far this year. In the previous year, the number was eight.Lack of nutrition among pregnant mothers and adolescent girls are the main cause of the high infant mortality rate. The government has been implementing many schemes including the community kitchen in which nutritious meal is supplied for free.A team of experts from the National Institute of Nutrition (2013) visited Attappady tribal area for studying infants or children deaths and reported that the infant mortality rate (IMR) there was 66 as compared to 14.1 deaths per 1000 live births in the rest of the state. Attappady is a tribal block established in 1962 and located east of the Silent Valley in the Western Ghats, one of the world’s most famous biodiversity hotspots. Yet the tribal community, there, are victims of state apathy. Among Adivasi children of 12 months or less, 9.1 percent are severely underweight, 32.2 percent suffer from severe stunting and 7 percent suffer from severe wasting.

Attappady can be called Kerala’s “sub-Saharan Africa,” said the Ekbal Committee (2013) observing that most women had undergone abortion more than once and almost all children examined suffered from anaemia and malnutrition.

“The continuing deaths expose the hollowness in the government’s flawed vision on tribal welfare. What is happening in the region is a combined effect of poverty, lack of employment, land alienation, failure to provide forest rights, loss of traditional agriculture and loss of indigenous food. There must be a comprehensive vision to address the tribal issue of the region,” says tribal activist K.A. Ramu.

Madhu was prey to the incessant violence both explicit and implicit that are orchestrated nationally on the downtrodden, subaltern and the tribal.

Madhu’s death could be a one-off incident-sure not be the last- but a pointer to the harsh reality of deaths due to starvation that still prevails in Attappady, the only tribal block in the state, and yet, neglected by the state government.

Kerala is staring at the “silent genocide.”

“Sadly enough, the most painful goodbyes are the ones that are left unsaid and never explained."― Jonathan Harnisch,Frek

The Battle of Koregaon!!

2018-01-09T03:19:00.000-08:00

T
he Battle of Koregaon won by British Army;was a territorial clash per se, between the British and the Maratha ruler, Peshwa Baji Rao II. It assumed much importance for the Dalits, who consider it a victory-moment over Peshwa authority. The Mahars, though untouchables, had been valued for their military acumen by both Britisher's and Shivaji’s Army. However, when the Peshwas took over, the Mahars in lieu of their low caste status were ill-treated by the ruling Brahmins.

In the Battle of Koregaon, the Mahars formed a major chunk of the British troops in the war and their victory over a much stronger Peshwa war machine came to be commemorated over the years as an event of pride for the Mahars.

Every year on january 1,thousands from Mahars, a Dalith community in Maharashtra , throng to the victory pillar in Kargoan near Pune to commemorate the war victory that took place 200 years ago. This year the bicentenary celebratory event of the battle of Korgoan turned out to be violent cast clashes, which left one dead and scores injured.

It all started on December 29, when someone put up a board near a structure believed to be the tomb of Govind Gopal Mahar -a Dalit from the Mahar community in Vadhu Budruk village, about 5 km from Bhima Koregaon in Pune. The board said he defied the orders of Mughal king Aurangzeb and performed the last rites of Maratha king Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj. Govind Gopal Mahar was tortured and murdered by Aurangzeb in 1689.They believe that it was their ancestors who had performed the last rites. The Gram Panchayat authorities objected and alleged that history was being falsified as there was no evidence to corroborate the claim. The recurring theme was that the battle is the Kshathria dharma- invoking Manu. Dalits have no history of battles ever fought. Hence the Dalits will not be permitted to conduct victory celebrations.The same day, an offence was registered by Dalit activists against 49 persons of Vadhu Budruk village under the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act.On the first January, when lakhs of Dalits had gathered in the city to attend the event, an altercation broke out between the rival communities which eventually led to the clash.

The tremors of violence spread quickly to other parts of the state across several districts in western Maharashtra as well as the Marathwada and Vidarbha regions. Activists of Dalit groups, social outfits and Ambedkarite parties staged roadblocks.Commerce and commute in several parts of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad were thrown off-kilter as State transport buses were pelted with stones during demonstrations by Bhim Sainiks.Maharashtra Chief Minister has blamed Maoists for the violence.Villagers demanded that the government pay compensation of Rs1 crore for the family of the deceased Rahul Fatangade. The Maharashtra government has ordered a judicial probe and announced a compensation of Rs 10 lakh to Fatangade's family.Devendra Fadnavis ordered a judicial inquiry into Bhima-Koregaon clashes.

The celebrations were ever peaceful over the years though disenchantment overcast the firmament. The simmering discontent between Marathas and Kunbi castes were flared when in July 2006 four Dalit men in a Bhotmango family were killed in a gory incident in Bhandara District in Maharashtra. In July 2016, a 14-year-old girl of the rival community, studying in Class IX was gang-raped and tortured to death at Kopardi village in Karjat taluka of Ahmednagar district. The violent conflicts ensued, soared to the level of political fulminations, culminated in the torching of many many Dalit ghettos in Pune, Nasik and Ahmedabad Nagar. The Marathi upsurge resulted in a hike in the reservation in Govt services which fermented the Daliths resentment. Dalits political assertion has led to Gigesh Mevani, the Gujarat MLA in the Edgar Parishad to declare that Dalits are on a warpath with the new Pershaows of BJP-RSS outfit.

The struggle attained new dimensions when the Marathasc came to the rescue of the Brahman CM with the presumption that the Dalit struggle is directed to Fednavis.The Dalits were hitherto tied to the mainstream parties like BJP,Congress and the NCP. The Republican party founded by Ambedkar works as incoherent and disruptive splinter groups in Maharashtra .The new saga has spiked up the Dalit consolidation. The Dalit politics which revolved around mainstream politics have begun to enjoy their new found identity The Gorgoan has instilled a need for a common cause for the Dalits in Maharashtra. The Marati community consisting of 32 percent of Maharashtra also has consolidated as a new political entity to reckon with that no mainstream politics can afford to ignore.

The politics which revolved around Marathi pride are now on the trail behind caste politics. When the Marathi-Dalit conflict turns worse the caste-nationalism will firm up its grips hard.The cast is the greatest fault line of Indian politics.

Hikikomori-the new normal

2018-01-02T03:15:00.000-08:00

When the volatile and ever-changing life styles aggravated by technical niceties coupled with the shift in civic consciousness go feral ,its necessary offshoot -the social withdrawal as the Japanese say hikikomori becomes the new normal.

The linear and monocentric growth of cities -historically the principal engine of innovative economic glut –is the hallmark of modern life. People live in snazzy and mammoth apartment complexes –graciously proportioned in the city hearts. People live shut and shunted from the next door in their cozy cloistered closets ,blissfully disconnected from the neighborhood. The ubiquitous androids and the cyber spaces together have worsened the seclusion of the youngsters leaving them burrowed to their selves. They are now slaves of their-self. They are the victims and actors of cyber perversions. The less fortunate who come from the outskirts and lower strata of society are no exceptions.

In an a typical instance reported from Pathanamthitta in Kerala a mother of a plus two boy has to resort to legal remedy with the State Women Committee .An elder women with whom the boy got befriended and tangled over mobile, eloped with her .Soon they were hammer and tongs over money .The scuffle that ensued dragged them to the court and the boy was sent down for 3 months. Only then the mother came to know of it.

The mother who led a hard scrabbled life ,had after much haggling, cajoling and coaxing made her son to settle for a mobile phone in lieu of his ambitious project to own a pricey motor bike.

The women’s court on passing orders in the case admonished the lady who had waylaid the boy in to the immoral life and said that the incident is a blot to the society and an eye opener for the sparing fathers and the spending sons. These and other incidences point to the flagging communal values in our societal spaces. Our youngsters who hold back and get holed in to their spaces glued to the mobile gadgets and the apps bereft of the social sharing’s and the neighbor hoods –are subjects of the endemic disease of agoraphobia. According to survey results, 46.3 percent of respondents said they'd experienced phubbing at the hands of their significant other –a term coined in 2013 and is a portmanteau of the words 'phone' and 'snubbing'.

There is even a Stop Phubbing campaign group, which started in Australia and was set up to address the problem. While phubbing most definitely has social consequences, it also has a significant environmental impact as smartphones consume far more energy than most of us think.

The reclusive culture acts against the social mores and probity- manifesting itself in road rages ,the shameless audacity in flouting the law and cyber crimes .

People are much more thrilled by the two or three dimensional world of computers than getting thrilled by real world around them. Today’s technology is already producing a marked shift in the way we think and behave, particularly among the young, and this shift is not positive either.A serious lifestyle change is needed.

The vigil should start from homes and schools. The doting parents who slip in to buying anything they want to quench their greed should teach them to abide by the rules of law and also to answer it.

For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thurst-Khalil Gibran

Wings of dream

2017-12-31T20:39:00.001-08:00

Kambini Giri an obscure village on the banks of Kabini in Vayanad District in Kerala sits snugly and refreshingly cool in the benign weather. Young Jimi stands forlorn ,crouched on the door, stares at the pathway that runs in front of her cottage as a ritual. Out in the morning breeze were the bratty kids clad in their bright uniforms after a resourceful week end, squalling whining playing pranks under their colourful umbrellas. She was sad as she cannot join them in their bandying though not past the school age. She sobs ,sighs and secretly weeps. Once their friends out of sight ,she silently draws back to her borough in the hut only to reappear sharp at fifteen minutes past four when the children return back home with their usual churlish pranks. She keeps the midday meals ready in the tiffin box to forget the pain of being cut away from the school.

It all started at the age of five when suddenly she would fall for no reason. In the beginning she would stand up effortlessly after a fall. Soon she found that she couldn’t help herself during the falls. It was Mascular Distropia in the medical jargon -a group of disorders that involve a progressive loss of muscle mass and consequent loss of strength that affect up to 1 in every 5,000 males. Muscular dystrophy is caused by genetic mutations that interfere with the production of muscle proteins that are needed to build and maintain healthy muscles. There is currently no cure.

Jimis parents ,daily waged labourers as they are , had to run pillar to post to meet the medical expenses of the child. Soon their second daughter Sumi also began to show similar symptoms. The two were friends more than sisters. The affliction grew with them with the nursery classes .All systems of medical treatments were tried-out but of no avail. Jini thirteen and Sumi at nine were now tied to the wheel chairs for ever. Sumi was lucky to attend up to seventh class. By now the parents had the piece of land sold out and are in no way to hire a vehicle to send their children to school.

None can hold back when destiny beckons. Their home became their school, the kitchen their laboratory and the nature the university.

It was sheer grit and unflinching determination that lead them. They attended the upper primary exams at KabaniGiri school. When they reached Higher secondary classes, teachers from Nirmala School stood by them. They helped them to clear doubts in Computer lessons. Each exam was a fight with life and disease. Jimi scored 90% marks in Secondary classes followed by Suma with 80% .They passed plus Two with 85% marks for imi and 76% marks for her sister with humanity as their subjects. They learned glass painting and handicrafts.

They were denied degree admission in the nearby college on the pretext that daily attendances are a must which they cannot guarantee. Obstacles were many for parallel education as well. At times, the parents even thought of retreat and put their children on spiritual classics.

When all the doors were closed a College named JDT,Vellinod came with the glitter of hope .The patrons of the college Sri.Rasheed ,the vice President and Chair Person Sri.CP.KunhuMohammed came as saviours. Coaching,loadging and mess were offered free. They bought them self controllable wheelchairs-even put op ramps and lifts for them. They bought them lap tops too.

It was three years intense pursuit in the shadows of kind hearted Vellimadikkunnu. Jini came out with first rank and Sumi with first class. They both finished post-graduation in Multimedia with top ranks and entered in to the teaching faculty in the same collage. The Eastern Bhumika Award and Yes Bank award came in their way. In the midst of the course they made a documentary titled ‘Life of Wheels”.

It is seven years that Mary is living with her Children in JDT. She lives with them. They wanted to be with their mother always. They wanted her presence from the morning ablution till they are asleep.They reminisce in one mind.”Our mother taught us on concave and convex lenses with a steel spoon .She taught us the litmus test with the Hibiscus. Mother is the fount of our strength in our life. Without her fond care and vigil we won’t be here.”

In the class rooms they get the affection and care of their students .Their students knew what their teachers want. The students set the microphone and projector for them.

Jiji and Simi do not think of research as they are tied to the wheels and research involves a lot of travel. A government job is a must for them for a more secure life. Their parents are in financial straits and suffer health issues. Their father Jhon is bedridden over a vertebral fracture after a fall .He can not go to work. Mary has a cervical problem which hold her back.

Bizarre are the ways of destiny.

Coutesy: Deshabhimani-Sunday Newspaper-31-12-2017

Occupy Kerala House

2013-12-12T01:35:00.002-08:00

W
inter is settling over north, Jandar Mandir is in the clutches of the cold spell. Last season it drooped to two degree Centigrade in the same month. V.Jazeera remains unfazed and comfy in her makeshift cloister, walled and roofed with flux board sheets and tarpaulin, on the footpath in Delhi.
She is on a sit-in in front of the Kerala House in Delhi flanked by her adolescent daughters Rizvana and Shihana and the infant-in-arm Mohammed settled snuggly on her breast, on the luxury of a a plywood sheet on the floor. An old sari twirled and tied to the rope that hung from the branches of the peepul tree is the cradle for the toddler. Students from JN University come to see her, help her daughters in their study, the pedestrians ask her if she had food. The lanky woman past her youth, decked in blank abaya with headscarf, assiduously declares that her task is to terminate the rampant and invidious sand mining along the 580 Km of Kerala coast line.

Her struggle is singular, a one-off strife away from the spotlight with no fanfare or ticker taped Manhattan parades -that did not fill a lot of column inches in the media.
“I am the daughter of the sea .I live with my eyeballs glued to the sea.” With a lackluster look that beguiles a vivid and untiring mind, she harks back to the days spent in her teens with her peers-the days they reveled in counting sea waves- the frolics on the sand dunes, the engaging sand games- draining a lot of turtle eggs. It is the unscrupulous sand mining which ate away the vitals of the vast swaths of sand before her, its fauna and the sea weeds. With stunning disbelief, Jaseera saw the 60m distance to the sea dwindled before her, her house fast running towards the sea.” The state and central governments have the responsibility for the enforcement of the coastal conservation laws.” She rues.
Jaseera is not a green freak nor an eco-warrior baptized to the nature conservation. She has not heard of Ernst Haeckel who coined the term “Ecology”.She has not read Karl August Mobias nor has she heard of Sunder Balji Bahuguna,Bhatt Sab,GowriDevi,Swamy Naganand or the Chipko movement. But she could not be laid back as a silent spectator resigned to her comfy cocoon while the sand from the convoluted coastlines called “Neerozhukkumchal”is ravened by the hungry sand larks. Neerozhukkumchal is a sleepy hamlet in Payangadi, a small town at a commuting distance from the Kannur District head quarters. She knew the staccato of the clawing disaster getting louder. Jaseera wanted to resist.
She had her rustic devises. Often she threw herself before the wheels of tippers plying with sand loads unmindful of the bodily harm it provoked. Armed with the mobile phone–the lone technological aid in her command- she took photographs of migrant women in convoy, employed by the sand mafia, with the sand sacks as head load. The mafia red in tooth and claw, unleashed a serious of harassments and intimidations. She braved the torture and tease with stoic forbearance. The mafia took all out in their arm chase with the politicians, police-all playing footsie with them. They tried coaxing, coercing, cajoling but she steadfastly refused to grovel before them. The mafia riled by the obduracy of the fragile women devised a new offensive in collusion with the local politicians - connecting her resistance to the right to work of the local women, in a bid to legitimize the lawbreaking –which they knew could ignite the public temper.
Undaunted Jaseera took her case to the police. The police preferred to play ostrich and remained mute with the refrain “if necessary we shall take petty cases against the errants.” This was when she decided to sit-in before the Payangadi police station. On June 14th Jaseera sat on the ground near the wall of the police station compound in the safety of an umbrella braving the torrential July rain and the ice cold sea wind with her baby huddled to her chest.
Many argued she was after media attention and money. Some sermonized with her on the virtue to be a good home maker-tendering the children and the family than to venture in big things that remain in the realms of men.

On the fourth day of the sit-in, child line officials came with a weird logic “She kept her juvenile children at night in a children-unfriendly situation, whereby was in conflict with the law.” She was whisked away to a women protection home at Tellicherry, fifty Kms from Payangadi leaving her children behind. Jaseera refused to sign a written statement to the effect not to keep the children with her in the strike in return for her freedom. She ridiculed the overarching enthusiasm in display and the blatant short supply of it when it comes to the redeeming children in streets who die on inadequate medicine and food, the orphan who sleeps on the shop verandas on the prowl of antisocials. She knew it was a bogey carefully stage-crafted to put hammers in to her work, a means to malign her mission. Succumbing before her obstinacy, she was let free on the 3rd day of her captivity, with out any written commitments. The authorities did not show the minimum decorum to arrange conveyance for her return .She has to beg for the bus fare from people around .Soon she found herself amidst the thick of struggle before the Payangadi police station, her daughters dutifully joined after class hours.
On the tenth of July she was forcefully evacuated from the station compound to her house. She caught a public transport and rushed to the district headquarters to venture a new sit-in. Accordingly on July 18th a police aid post was set up at Neerozhukkumchal on the sea shore with a jeep and two cops. She called off her struggle .To her dismay she found sand filled tippers fleeting in droves with impunity in the nearby areas away from the eye-reach of the police.
It was not in her scheme of things. Jaseera is now firm-footed on the cause of the coastal lines.The coastal line is the single largest reason-de-etre for the subsistence of the humankind on the land. If the police is hamstrung, necessary instructions should flow from the top-the Aid post was just one suggestion for it.
She had to re-start the struggle with in 5 days. Asked why she did not end up the stir ,Jaseera says,”Who told you I was fighting for NeerozhukkumChal alone?”
From Kannur, on Aug 2nd, the scene shifted to the state secretariat- the nerve center of the state administration. She wanted stringent and deterrent action against the violations of Coastal Regulation Zone(CRZ)rules across the state, in the 9 districts that touches the shores. The Chief Minister visited her and had her belly full of promises- that every thing will be taken care of- but nothing was forthcoming. On the 64th day at Trivandrum, on October 4, she declared:” I am going to Delhi.” She got in to a general compartment and reached Delhi on the 3rd day.
And the struggle continues.....
She has a long and arduous past of endurance both evocative and emotional, this being the latest passage in a searing struggle with life. A drop out from tenth standard in 1996 with hard scrabbled upbringing-she could attend the last year for two months only -was married off which presented her with two daughters and a broken marriage. The tough and arduous game-to-live finally slotted her into the cameo of an auto driver in the male domain, a losing game for a women driver clad in burqua –these days a rare spectacle in Payangadi. Eye balls struck on her with usual grumpy skepticism as an intruder to the male space. Though she possessed a valid badge and license, she was languished in the boil not knowing how and where to complain, to assert her right to work. She could not stick through in the turf war that ensued which made her scurry to the nearby Mattool where she managed to work for a few months.
Soon she was back at Payangadi, this time determined to put up a gritty battle of survival. But destiny had a different recipe ready for her. The male drivers ruffled their feathers in collusion with the police and trained their guns to her. The persistent perking, bluster and bravado breached all limits. She did not have the sufficient skill set to withstand the onslaught, in a fit of fury, banged her badge on to the face of the police and stomped out to complaint to the RTO. She met Mr.V.S.Achuthanandan, the then Chief minister with the fledgling child in her lap. She kept on tenaciously for another year in the stand, fighting the rogue elements, suffering in disgust.
Jaseera went to live with her husband at Kottayam after the 2nd marriage. A year hence she returned to her native village for the delivery of the last child. She was shattered to find the metamorphosis of the shore in front of her hut- that triggered her spite against the sand barons.
“I was heartbroken to sea the beach in memory gone forever and the destruction is irreversible” She said.
Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh wrote a personnel letter to the CM of Kerala OoMen Chandy to draw his specific attention of her plight finding “Her demand has merit as she is opposing illegal mining.”

Jaseera is a symbol. The epitome of an ordinary woman with extraordinary life, who gate crashed in to the uncharted male domain, quiet unceremoniously. She reminds one of the stubborn struggles put up by Mailamma against the multinational giants at Plachimada in Kerala.

And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made in to a woman and brought her to man (Genesis 2.22).As Sulphath Teacher , an activist and a feminist writer observes:” When it comes to women emancipation, birds of a feather flock together. If God created men on his image, the God must be a male. The women are created with the rib (the most curved one) of the man for his sexual consummation. How could she have the autonomy?” This is the domineering factor in the construct of public conscience in a male centered society.
Is the woman-in-hijab a renegade? A mole that plays in the hands of some terrorists?.
Revolt is no hayride. Jaseera was hauled over the coals for allegedly playing the tollgate for extracting money. It is touted as the reason why she does not withdraw her agitation. The activist and writer A.S.SureshKumar writes in a regional weekly:” To some Jaseera is a pseudo-ecologist after money. She has never asked for money. The passers by give her some money which she accepts for the survival of the family. She does not check whether there are terrorists in them.”
If extortion is the why and wherefore, she had no reason to cop all the hassles and could have lined up her own pocket from the sand sharks themselves who could be only too willing to part the money.
She had no supporters ab initio among the locals and even her brothers shunned her. Jaseera had tough time deterring her brothers playing for the sand lobby. Later locals cottoned up to her and turned to be her vocal sympathizers. People from different walks of life including the versatile south Indian matinee idol Suresh Gopi lined up in aid of her cause. The points she raised can be downplayed by none.
The woman was branded mentally sick. Quiet often people are branded insane when they stray from the established track. It becomes all the more queasy when women think ahead of time-examples galore in human history.
Sri.Abdullakkutty, a relatively new convert to Congress and the MLA from her constituency kept himself a notch above all her detractors, struck his oar in with his pearl of wisdom- “Don’t shovel sand in to the shore”-a wry humor that wrapped in a veiled threat. The Isabelle Allende phrase deftly dovetailed to the context was an intended sly that her effort is ludicrous, pointless, aimless, and trivial- hence a wild goose chaise. When the lawmakers themselves doubt the efficacy or its necessity, the laws they make become a mockery. Dr Vazhappilli a voracious reader and quick witted to respond in reader’s columns says the suave phrase reminds him of the idiom 'don’t carry coal to the NewCastles'. He reminds the MP of the Basheerian proposition that this planet is not proprietary to the human alone but is an abode for all microorganisms to mammoths-equally shared.
The capital is in the frenzy of elections, the state government having other occupations than to sit back and crack the code of otherwise a simple issue-enforcing a law made by them. The battle of nerves for the seashore continues, the ship of victory not hove into sight.

But Dhoni has not tucked the towel!

2013-06-12T03:10:00.002-07:00

The baby of Indian cricket has hogged the media limelight for all the odd reasons.Sreeshanth stole the cover ,this time not by his quick-silver temperament in the sun but presumably for even more ugly reason-having nobbled by the smooth-talking bookies to breach the crickets no-go- areas.The 3 idiots of the comic show are bee lined in a kamikaze flight to the to the forbidden land of bet-scape and ignominy. The trio -Sreeshanth with the other two relatively non-entities in cricket are now lodged in Tihar jail ,in the process of law, for spot fixing ( a relatively fresh coinage for match fixing).More skeletons began tumbling in the cupboard .

BCCIs chieftain's son-in-law is in the thick of controversy of betting on the team of which he is the principal.Sri.Sreenivasan who owns CSK had to step aside(mind you not step down)- not because of any moral compulsions but for the sheer expediency of the situation.A sad commentary is that the the captain of the National team himself is embroiled in a conflict of interests case .With the dust has not settled as yet-several ex cricketers are under the scanner of the Delhi sleuths. Many famous IPL teams are in the dragnet,in the wait to be unmasked .

The cricket chroniclers might bang on about the intricate wheels and deals in IPL .The T20 pageant patented in India ever since its inception is all about filthy lucre,muzzle,starlets,sleaze,bollywood glams,mafia Dons,greedy bookies,skimpy cheer-girls,wannabe women,women escorts to honey trap the players ,bet-crazy punters,post match late night parties where wine and women flowed profusely .The IPL thrives in such cheep stunts presided by the slushy funds of the corporate houses-of which some has direct stakes in it. Its anatomy is such to invite slyboots and criminals.The players are thought as cannon fodder and plunked down dearly for the job they do.It is a business with its inherent murky transactions .Players are not selected but are auctioned as a commodity .Unlike other sporting events like foot ball or baseball where the agents to the player are to be licensed for negotiating on behalf of the player,in cricket the agents who could be a relative or a friend need not be accredited to the governing body. It is the money mill for all including the media who have the access to its doorsill.G.Gunamoorthy ,the well-known commentator on politics writes in the newIndian Express ;"The IPL method of auctoneering of cricketers with top player first and proceeds after wards to next ones is modelled precisely on the Babylonian auction of the most beautiful brides first ,moving down in the order".

Was ShriShanth a victim of gross shenanigan in the dressing rooms ,a fallout of his tweaks after the slape-gate?Could he be so knave to dice with death to be lured by a piddling 10 Lakhs which pales to insignificance in contrast with the hefty pay-kit of 2.4 crores for which he was auctioned?Can the 500 crore bet-gate limit its locus around these 3 idiots alone?Many a questions wait for answers.

We cannot be so gullible to gorge the police leaks with out water.A friend of Shreeshanth was quoted somewhere "He is someone who made a comeback, and was well aware of the match fixing issues. For the sake of a few lakhs, I don't think he would jeopardize his career. I feel something is definitely fishy,"

Away from the middle Sreeshanth is a god loving son for his parents, some one who throws himself for friends and a perfect gentle man to the core for all who loved him.Out in the field the swashbuckling maverick ,the lone genuine pacer as he is ,might appear to be a scumbag on short fuse often looking wildly frantic with his 'forced aggressiveness' ,sleazy sledges and antics-that even his captain could not mend.

Out from action, fighting injuries and his age weighing too harsh against him ,Sreeshanth was frenetic to get inducted in the squad to south Africa.In such a scenario no mortal fool could afford to be humored to be in the point blank range of ignominy. None in his wild guess could surmise that the bookies will be delighted in these piddles who cannot mesmerize the imaginations of the punters.Is there a whiff of treachery in the air?But sure,there may be more than the eyes could meet.Read it along with the match fixing events 13 years back where in the top notches like Azar,Cronjia,Jadeja-captains as they were-were the targets being caught in the mayhem of match-fixing.

Was the whole Thamasa stage managed or cannibalized especially when IPL is a poisoned chalice and a crass commerce of corruption ,greed and lust?

The media led hype centered around the fallacy that a billion is cheated by this trio.The lilliputian format that is the bedrock on which the 500Crore betting racket flourishes is not a campaign for the country.It is not Team India against any other cricketing nation. Could you believe that-in a cinema theater where you pay for the balkany-only to witness some thing rote -be felt cheated? IPL is the bollywood of cricket known for its utter lack of transparency-a brainchild of Lalith Modi whom the BCCI had reprimanded a few years ago.IPL is run by a conglomerate of chrematists wielding great power with no accountability.Spot-fixing is regular.

Does the IPL has anything in its credit to suggest that it is fit to generate an honest national concern?Is there a logic for the flood gate of jingoism so expressedly unleashed in the media blare and by the indignant tadpoles in the internet?IPL is a shared business for the sake of business -designed by the business men.The teams are a queer assortment of worn out warhorses drawn from different cricketing countries and the unheralded but talented domestic youngsters designed tobe led mercilessly to the slaughter house .The format in itself is anti-cricket where batting is the blind brandishing of the bat-grossly one-sided. It is easy to concede runs than to get it.It is a format where a bowler is dwarfed -whose prowess is little honored.It creates the avenue for spot-fixing.

IPL is an entertainment. It is a cosmetic extravagance,the overuse of which has sullied the grace in Cricket. Has the IPL got anything in its credits to point as as its contribution for the infrastructure or other developments in the sports arena in the country ?

There is little wonder that the extravaganza should bring with it the lure for the implicit adventure by way of bets.There are no laws against match-fixing in India even now.The D-gang nexus is its poetic denouement.The D-tag with Indian Cricket dates back to 1990's and is an integral part of its global crime business ever-since.S.Gurumoorthy says that the Dubai based crime syndicate owns half of Bollywood through money and their writ rules Bollywood. Quoting Dainik Bhaskar he says that Davoods link with Bollywood has never been secret.Mandakini ,Sanjay Dutt and Anil Kapoor have been spotted with the Don.T-series owner Ulshan Kumar has been gruesomely killed by Davoods men.Rakesh Roshan who defied the Don was shot in 2000.D-Gang has drawn its dragnet in every sphere of Indian activity-in the police ,in politics,Bollywood and now in cricket.

Delhi Police has accused Sreeshanth of colluding with bookies to bowl a fixed over in which he agreed to concede 14 runs or more. The police booked him under MCOCA alleging his nexus with the bookies who are pones in the bigger dragnet laid by the D-gang.The bowler allegedly given cues for bets by tucking a towel in his trouser before beginning the over

However, Sreeshanth conceded one run less than the concurred minimum of 14.Sreeshanth gave only 5 runs in the first four balls of that over, two of which were dot balls. Senior counsel Pinaki Misra arguing on behalf of Sreeshanth told the judge. "There were two dots balls in the first four deliveries of Sreeshanth's over. Will a bowler who has agreed to spot fix, like the police are claiming, give away just 5 runs in his first four balls? That means he has to ensure that he gets hit for at least one six in the last two deliveries if he has to concede 14 runs because even two fours won't do." There was nothing fishy or unusual about the fast bowler's second over in Rajasthan Royals's May 9 IPL game against Kings XI Punjab.Misra told additional sessions judge Vinay Kumar Khanna .

There was also nothing suspicious about the fifth delivery that Kings XI captain Adam Gilchrist pulled for a four, Misra argued."That particular delivery was bowled at around 135 kilometres per hour. Only a batsman of the caliber of Gilchrist, who is an excellent puller and hooker of the cricket ball, would have been able to score a four off that ball. Gilchirst pulls and hooks better than the best of Indian batsmen. Sreeshanth is really fast so it was an exceptional shot rather than a poor ball that resulted in that particular boundary," Misra said.

The last ball of the over was bowled according to the field. The ball was around off stump and a packed off side field was in place and it is once again the skill and experience of Gilchrist that made that particular four possible. And he didn't bowl a wide or a no ball or a bouncer that could have been called wide.

Misra also told the court that the "unique signals" that police say Sreeshanth gave bookies — tucking the towel and taking time to warm up — were not really unusual, and submitted pictures of other players on the field, including Rahul Dravid, with towels tucked in.Sreeshanth has played World Cup matches and Tests with the towel tucked in. Fast bowlers especially use the sweat towel to ensure that the ball remains in good condition when the humidity and heat is high. The May 9 game in which Sreeshanth allegedly spot fixed was played at 42 degrees.

Shri Shanths lawyer explained in the court that the best fast bowlers in the world take time to warm up because they bowl at speeds of 135 kmph. They have to warm up properly or they will get injured.

Misra also informed the court that Sreeshanth had paid the bills for all the parties he hosted during the tournament with a "gold debit card" and a "gold credit card". Sreeshanth's bank statements show over 25 transactions, including one in which he spent Rs 1,58,000 on a party at the team hotel.

His fans believe that something is fishy about the police extremism.

If these 3 idiots(if they really were) deserves to be slapped let them stand it ,but only after establishing their crime ,after due process of the law.They are not anti-nationals or traitors.They are not scamsters or those greedy billionaires who stash away wealth in tax-havens abroad nor are they tax-evaders.Don't be swayed by hasty conclusions to join the bandwagon.

Stop!Flash news................

tip to the tycoon.

2013-04-23T03:49:00.000-07:00

The RIL chairman Mr.Mukhesh Ambani will get Z-category security ,the second in line with the VVIP's Z+ in its worth as per the orders issued by Union Home Ministry purportedly after a written threat received by him from the terror outfit Indian Mujahid. A police officer on condition of anonymity reveals to The Indian Express correspondent that the letter, delivered by an unidentified person to Ambani's personal staff in a sealed envelope at his Maker Chambers office on February 24,contained threats that the IM would damage his 27-storey mansion 'Antilia' on Altamount Road.

The business tycoon will be guarded by 22 armed commandos led by an inspector rank official and escorted by pilot and follow-on vehicles.

The new entrant to the VIP- security club will have to foot the bill on a 'cost reimbursement 'basis at Rs.15 Lkhs on a monthly basis.

The order has stirred a hornets nest.The Hindu editorial said that though the Ambani has asked for setting up a chawky at his skyscraper 'Antilla' the Govt has gone from dragging its feet to sanctioning the full Bandobusth that comes with Z-category.

When asked for a flower he was gifted with a full garden.

There has been mixed reactions.former Border Security Force Director General Prakash Singh called the decision as atrocious and was quoted as saying:"While the CRPF was fighting hard against Naxals, deployment of personnel for a private person would hurt force’s morale. India’s richest man can easily get best of private guards for himself…There is no need to government to oblige him,” . Similarly, Aam Admi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal strongly opposed the move and stated that if at all there was a threat perception Mr. Ambani could hire the best security agency in the world.

VIP security is a status symbol ,though the rich by themselvelves can invest in high and steely private security systems over threat perceptions if any.

Forbes ranks Mr Ambani as 22nd in the world of riches and estimates his net worth to $21.5 billion.He stands in the 37th position in the list of world’s 71 most powerful people only to be behind Congress president Sonia Gandhi (12th position) and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (19th position).

senior CPI(M) leader Basudeb Acharia told reporters that:“It is unprecedented that at a time when such ghastly and gruesome incidents of rape are taking place and people are demanding more security, Z category security is given to a top corporate leader like Ambani and the commoners are left in the lurch,”.

Maharashtra minister for rural development Jayant Patil of NCP justified the security cover. He said it is important for the state to protect its industrialists to create a conducive environment for business and investment.

Lately the Supreme Court has frowned on the offensive VIP Security Culture observing that an indiscriminate exercise in providing security to VIPs resulted in abuse of power.

In India, there are only 137 policemen for every lakh of the population while over 45,000 policemen guard 13,000 VIPs across India. Official records also say that 22 per cent of police posts are vacant. The center has told the court that approximately Rs. 341 crore was spent on guarding VVIPs in Delhi last year. Most of this money was spent on 376 individuals who had been given Z-plus or central security forces. Rs. 40 crore was spent on the security in Rashtrapati Bhawan alone.Estimates indicate that nearly Rs. 600 crore is spent annually on all areas of VIP security, including salaries of personnel on VIP duty.

In the national Capital alone, there are about 390 guarded VIPs and about 15,000 Delhi police personnel, out of its strength of 60,000, are deployed on VIP security duties. The protected include ministers, politicians, bureaucrats, judges, religious leaders, and a handful of journalists.

How things could be like if the 40,000 odd high profile business men are entitled for security cover worthy of their purses while it goes with out saying that in this 'global' scenario all businessmen are VIPs.

“If streets are unsafe, then it has to be unsafe for the Secretary of the State also,” Justice Singhvi observed.The court went on to say that" Indiscriminate use of power in placing VIPs in a high dignitary category results in abuse of power. Positional security or security due to threat perception becomes a symbol of power. If power is misused, it runs riot on ordinary citizens.”

"Let us treat our citizens on a par.”

As Home Minister P. Chidambaram said:“I am internally secure, so I do not need elaborate security.”

The fall of a sporting legend

2013-02-24T23:56:00.000-08:00

One more icon-a sporting legend who triumphed over disability to compete with able-bodied athletes at the Olympics- falls. From the high pedestal in to the abhorring valley of infamy -this time not from any trickery in the field-but for a blatant and unsavory show of irresistible killing instinct.

Reuters report from South Africa- "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius, a double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, was charged on Thursday with shooting dead his girlfriend at his upscale home in Pretoria." Reeva Steenkamp, a girlfriend,a model and a rising reality TV starer was shot four times and killed at Pistorius' upscale home in an eastern suburb of the South African capital in the predawn hours of Thursday last.

Erik Weihenmayer, the first blind person to climb Mount Everest, wrote in an essay that Pistorius was "on the cusp of a paradigm shift in which disability becomes ability, disadvantage becomes advantage. "(Wiki)

In 2006, Pistoris was conferred with the Order of Ikhamanga in Bronze (OIB) by the President of South Africa for outstanding achievement in sports. Helen Rollason Award on 9 December 2007, was conferred for outstanding courage and achievement in the face of adversity.In February 2012 Pistorius was awarded the Laureus World Sports Award for Sportsperson of the Year with a disability.After the 2012 Summer Paralympics, the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow announced they would confer on Pistorius, among others, an honorary doctorate.In April 2012, Time Magazine named Pistorius, one of six athletes, in its list of “The World’s 100 Most Influential People” and remarked that he is “the definition of global inspiration.”

These were but some of the awards and accolades in the ques -for this man.

Was this man running truth-less to himself? -the tattoo he carried on his back,sported the Bible verse 1 Corinthians 9:26 which begins, "I do not run like a man running aimlessly."Opinion is divided at-least as at present.

No more ask for the roll-models.Sports men are just mortals like you and me.How dare one should expect them to be superhuman when it comes to morality, tolerance and the like heavenly niceties.It is self-deceiving when you construct temples for them.They can not stayed connected eternally to the throbbing hearts as holy men.They -the sport stars- have no eternal contract to have social obligation to be a roll model.

Athletes often make poor role models. Lance Armstrong, O.J. Simpson and Tiger Woods-all deceived us.Yuvraj known as a penchant hard cricketer -while undergoing his worst days fighting cancer -wrote on Twitter "Reading Lance Armstrong's book it's not about the bike! I'm sure it will motivate me and pull me through this time! Livestrong yuvstrong!" He was inspired from Lance Armstrong, the cyclist who had manfully fought with the testicular cancer and had won numerous Tour de France titles.

Lance Armstrong is doomed to oblivion with all medals being stripped and stands lifetime ban with the loss of unprecedented seven straight Tour de France titles and his Olympic bronze.

Oscar Pistorius is a compelling story about an extraordinary sports icon worth $2million a year riding above the crust in international sporting arena beating over his disability competing with his able-bodied rivals at the Olympics. Born without fibulas in his lower legs, his legs were amputated below the knee before he was one-year-old. Pistorius sweat hard for a four-year battle to compete against able-bodied athletes at the Olympics as the first double-amputee runner in Olympic history. He represented South Africa in the 400 meters and 4 x 400 relay at the 2012 London Olympic . Pistorius advanced to the semifinals in the 400 meters and retained his Paralympic title in that event.

He earned the nickname of “Blade Runner” because of his J-shaped prostheses, called “Flex-Foot Cheetah blades.” Each blade is a “custom-built, high-performance carbon fiber foot designed primarily for sporting activities.”

Peter Weyand, a professor of applied psychology and bio mechanics at Southern Methodist University is quoted as saying that Pistorius’s blades were very light, 5.4 pounds, as compared to 12.6 pounds for the leg and foot of a able-bodied runner which gives him an edge to reposition his blades 20 percent more rapidly than a normal competitor.

No less a figure than the Jamaican gold medalist Michael Johnson, the retired world-record holder and two-time Olympic champion at 400m, felt that Pistorius should not have competed at the London Games.

Erik Weihenmayer discounts the theory- " It's too easy to credit Pistorius' success to technology."He writes " Through birth or circumstance, some are given certain gifts, but it's what one does with those gifts, the hours devoted to training, the desire to be the best, that is at the true heart of a champion."

The man who cheered the crowd ,a great source of inspiration for the less advantaged , one of the pals in London's Olympic and Paralympic is behind the bars to be languished-the queer turn of the quakes-for a certain life time in jail if proved.

Initial reports suggested that Pistorius might have shot Steenkamp for a burglar-but cops trace no sign of forced entry or burglary at Pistorius's residence, despite rumors and reports on the contrary.There had been previous complaints of a “domestic nature” at his home. An investigation is on into a reckless driving.He had a night in police custody after an alleged assault- a reported threat to break a man's legs in a dispute over a woman.Also South Africa is one of the world’s most dreaded countries.

The perp-walk photos in the dailies shocked all in the sports world .In an interview with The Associated Press on Friday after the NBA’s All-Star celebrity game, Michael Johnson still couldn’t seem to believe it, saying “I’m still just trying to process it in my head to see if this is really real.” -The Hindu reports.

The irony is that the kill was staged on the 15th anniversary of the V-Day. It was on Feb. 14, One Billion Rising -the global invitation to dance-called upon all men and women to refuse to participate in the status quo until rape and rape culture ends.

An “adrenaline freak”-as he was often thought of- had raved in driving cars 155 miles per hour on roads with gutters and potholes and boat races-a crash of his boat once fixed him for 172 stitches-he was a votary of guns and shooting and had a penchant for keeping dangerous pets.

Pistorius may never run again .The newyork times quotes.“I have decided that following these tragic events that we have no option but to cancel all future races that Oscar Pistorius had been contracted to compete in,” his agent, Peet van Zyl, said in a statement.

One more icon fell from the dizzy hights of adoration to the sloughy land of disgust and oblivion.

Varma Commission report on women

2013-02-05T23:13:00.001-08:00

The waves of violence on women continue unabated in the national capital and elsewhere in the country-from female fetus to even not sparing older women.The lurid narratives are disgusting and nerve racking with its shear scale and the savageness of its methods. Little children are abused by near relatives.Young girls are hurled in to brothels from the protection homes over threats. New and innovative methods are contrived to exploit women sexually.The mobile phone and internet are increasingly becoming handy tools for the perpetrators.The trials and tribulations for the women are aplenty.

Stalkers are on the prowl with the secret camera, recording the private moments in toilets and bathrooms.The victims are caught unawares and are ensnared by the blackmailing thereafter.The sex merchants are adroitly banking in the new media engaged on the potholes in love-affairs.The legal security vehicles are increasingly ascertaining its vulnerability to effectively play their roll as deterrents.The legal system is stuck in limbo and is toothless. . We have a plethora of new as well as old laws on sexual assaults at work places. The misery and morass to which the Indian women are put make a mockery of these laws.

The plight of the Delhi girl and the nationwide dither and uproar it engendered points to the sad commentary on the deplorable frailties of the laws when it comes to the safety of women. The incident shook the nation in its shoes and triggered a nationwide debate on the need for deterrents. It is in this backdrop that the central Govt was constrained to form a 3 member committee to suggest its recommendations to arrest the atrocities on women.The committee chaired by Retired Chief Justice of SC J.S. Verma, and retired Justice Leila Seth and Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium as members , was constituted on December 23, 2012, to look into the criminal laws related to sexual violence against women. The committee interacted with many rape victims and children who were victims of exploitation.It was deeply moved by the victim-hood narratives of the horrible tale of a girl who appeared before them that they gave her about Rs 1.5 lakh. The Indian Express quotes Justice Subramanium: "Do you know that not only had she been sexually exploited repeatedly, she had also not been paid any wages by the people at whose home she was working? Where is our sense of justice? What about her rights?" Wide range of recommendations poured in from political parties,social activists and interest groups.The committee examined 80,000 recommendations in 29 days.The bottom-line was on protecting the right to dignity, autonomy and freedom of victims of sexual assault and rape.The committee suggested across the board,definitive reforms in electoral laws, policing, criminal laws and the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958.

The committee observes that "In our tradition bound society, structured on the basis of conservative values, when a woman is subjected to sexual assault in any form, it translates into a multiple crime. She is raped at home (literally and figuratively) and in public, followed by demeaning medical examination, examination and cross-examination by the police . In sum, the victim suffers intermittent rape in full public glare and in court, in salacious media reports, and in the insensitive response of society, including family and acquaintances."

Continued from page 1

The report makes it clear that the circumstances leading to the Delhi incident points finger at the unpardonable laxity in the administration of law and order. It patted the spontaneous show of feelings that followed.The scope of the report said: "We would like to state that it is the youth of India who actually by their extraordinary protest have reinforced reason, and have attempted to confront the state and political elite, to what is modern reality in the context of the Constitution". It further cautions the Govt," if such protests and if such engagements are discarded by the arrogance of power, or the assumption of authority, the political class may itself find its existence deeply imperilled".

The report elucidated the necessity of conducting the trial with in a time frame by women justices. It chaffed at the bureaucracy saying that the rules are for enforcement while suggesting a constitutional institution for the administration of laws pertaining to the security of women. It defined sexual assault as “intentional touching of another person when such act of touching is of a sexual nature and is without the recipient’s consent” and also “using words, acts or gestures towards or in the presence of another person which create an unwelcome threat of a sexual nature or result in an unwelcome advance.”It is the triumph of women’s movements in this country.

the Justice Verma Committee has clearly redefined 'Rape' as including all forms of non-consensual penetration of sexual nature (p.111). Not only has it elaborated what a sexual assault is, but also brought unambiguous definitions for voyeurism, stalking,disrobing and acid attacks and suggested the quantum of punishments for the above acts. A person convicted of stalking will get a jail term of not less than one year which may extend to three years, and will also be liable to fine.For voyeurism, the panel had recommended imprisonment of 1-3 years with fine on first conviction and 3-7 years for subsequent conviction. whoever assaults or uses criminal force to any woman or abets such act with the intention of disrobing or compelling her to be naked in any public place, shall be punished with imprisonment of either description for a term which shall not be less than three years, but which may extend to seven years and shall also be liable to fine.In case of a person voluntarily causes grievous hurt through use of acid, he will be punished with rigorous 10-year imprisonment, which may extend to life. He will also be liable to pay compensation to the victim, adequate to meet at least the medical expenses incurred by the victim. And in case of voluntarily throwing or attempting to throw acid, the accused will face rigorous imprisonment for a term of 5-7 years, besides paying compensation to the victim.

The committee in no uncertain terms disavowed the marital-rape-exception theory which goes against the recognition of women’s right to autonomy and physical integrity. Marriage is not a matter of consent and it cannot be a mitigating factor in rape cases.

The committee recommends an amendment in Section 6 of the AFSPA, 1958 which mandates prior sanction where the person has been accused of sexual assault. The committee felt that the police actions against the victims in rapes ,atrocities on tribals and other women by the army having special rights need be brought under surveillance. The Committee reminds the State that gender equality and safeguarding of human rights is a Millennium Development Goal (to be achieved by the year 2015) under the United Nations Millennium Declaration.

It recommended comprehensive institutional reform in children’s institutions and did not favor lowering of the age in juvenile delinquencies.

Continued from page2

The Union government will now send the Justice Verma Committee report to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs for consideration. Law Minister Ashwani Kumar hinted that it would not be possible to implement all recommendations, particularly on review of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and disqualification of tainted lawmakers. The Minister disagreed with the panel’s recommendations to disqualify politicians from contesting polls once a court takes cognizance of cases against them.

The parliamentary committee, headed by Bharatiya Janata Party leader M. Venkaiah Naidu, last week asked the MHA to send the Verma Committee report to it so that it could study it and make necessary amendments to the Criminal Law Amendment Bill, 2012.

Welcoming the report of Justice Verma Committee on Amendments,in a statement, the CPI(M) suggested the setting up a multi-ministerial committee with a time-bound mandate of one month to look into the other recommendations concerning different agencies such as on police reform, on bringing armed forces personnel under the purview of the criminal laws and withdrawing protection under the AFSPA, changes in The Representation of the People Act, on khap panchayats, on improvement of conditions in juvenile homes, and on specific facilities for disabled women.

The All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) also welcomed the committee recommendations. It said these were wide ranging suggestions including proposals to tackle the multiple sources of discrimination and inequality affecting women.“A longstanding demand of the women’s organizations that has been accepted by the committee is that marital rape should be recognized as rape." it said.

The bucks for the UPA Govt does not stop here.It has the responsibility to implement the recommendations of the Varma Commission.The amendments are investments which yields dividends and are to be implemented unwatered and in a phased manner.The police reforms posited by the commission need be examined by a committee including the different ministries concerned.The committee which has submitted its report in a record time has accessed the problems with a purpose.The complacency in this regard not only create another 'DELHI' but it shall ferment uproar and anger in unprecedented scale through out the country.

Pointing out that there was a need for sensitizing in the society, Justice Verma said: “We have all the laws; what is needed is sensitivity. It is equally shocking that a large number of people passed by where the girl and her companion lay completely disrobed and injured and no one offered help. It was total apathy….”

The death roars

2013-01-07T00:43:00.000-08:00

This is the word to word translation of a write up from Deshabhimani,Daily in Malayalam by Poulose.M.M journalist and writer.The page titled The Roaring Death in Malayalam can be accessed here.

In India all good things are known after women. 'Bharatham is the mother,earth is the goddess,knowledge is' Saraswathi', affluence is 'Lakshmi' .But a young girl lay bare,life-less over all these concepts,fables,myths and legends.She was lain like a bird arrowed down and decolleted by the male hubrice in the retreating hours of chilling December.

Rape and sexual assault has its own social backcloth. It comes first as a prerogative,then a routine and finally establish itself as legal. In Homers Iliad women body were the banquet for the victorious warriors.Battles for the troops were the blustering eateries of the female flesh.

Shechem the son of Hamor, the prince of the land, "seized her and lay with her and humbled her. And his soul was drawn to Dinah ... he loved the maiden and spoke tenderly to her," and Shechem asked his father to obtain Dinah for him, to be his wife.

A story in the Old Testamond ."Hamor came to Jacob and asked for Dinah for his son: "Make marriages with us; give your daughters to us, and take our daughters for yourselves. You shall dwell with us; and the land shall be open to you," and Shechem offered Jacob and his sons any bride-price they named. But "the sons of Jacob answered Shechem and his father Hamor deceitfully, because he had defiled their sister Dinah," saying they would accept the offer if the men of the city agreed to be circumcised.
How tragic is the settlement of a rape case!

The Old Testament exhorts the Israelis sons who conquer the city to subjugate the women.”They wont yield at first.So detain them. Still not submissive remove their hairs,pluck out the nails and rape her.”
We have grown from 10th century BC to 2012.Where is Delhi now?Did we hear 'Hey Ram' from the sobs of that sister in the revving vehicle. Beg pardon from the meditative flowers in RajGut!

Continued from page 1

Rules came for the lapidation of the married women if she was raped.Dictum came for deserting her from home. virginity of the woman is the family possession. There was a time when it was the divine right of the victorious soldiers to humble the women of the vanquished nation.Orphans were born in the places wherever the invaders footed. Beautiful young girls ds landed as courtesans of the king. King Solomon had 700 princess 300 concubines .In countries like Sumeria,Egypt,China,and Japan,a custom existed in which the kept women and personal guards were inhumated with the diseased king.
(an alien version of Sathi)

Shakespeare narrates what Henri V commands to France in the 100 years war....
With conscience wide as hell, mowing like grass
Your fresh fair virgins and your flow'ring infants....
What is't to me, when you yourselves are cause,
If your pure maidens fall into the hand
Of hot and forcing violation?
What rein can hold licentious wickedness
When down the hill he holds his fierce career...?
The ribaldry of the baton of authority.The hymns of wantonness which demarcate the globe with women body.

The assault on women has always been the afterbirth of any army action -when Germany entered Belgium,Japan invaded China,America crunched Vietnam and when Pak soldiers attacked Bangladesh-the shocks that history has handed over. The victory lap of those skulls loaded with explosives, stomp over the women body that shrivels in frisson on the face of cannons. Authority is the hemlock ,war a one-sided honeymoon .In Ruvanda,in Bosnia,in Congo whereever it be power has the lingo of sexual perversions.
Why India?

Here even God is embodied in women power-a concept of half-women-half man. Siv and Parvathy represent the unity or the one-ness of 'power and nature'-the 'Sindhooram' of Kailas. Krishna and Radha are the soul and body-the unremitting waves of Yamuna. Sitha is the rue-some heartbreak for Rama-the chapter of sorrow in Ayodhya. Lakshmi is the recourse for Vishnu-The stillness of the milky ocien.

The God in Hindu philosophy is a passage through all the human sentiments.The God and Goddess in trance of the embrace is the idols in the pantheons.These postures are the sculptural mastery put up in different temples through out India.Embraces are the denseness of the sentience of- undefinable love-a divine spectacle. The sculptors are the communication to the God.The folded hands in prayer are the solitary ferry towards the omnipresent love.The first tomb in the world in to the human sex was created in India.The Kamashastra ,that too written by a hermit.

Despite all this how come the dark spaces here have turned in to the stopover for the mentally aberrated.The public spaces in India are unsafe for the women folk. Dusk and nights are fearsome. Indian daughters are destined to see the moon and the stars in the sky through the half-open windows, as a convict. When the sun sets the second hands of female watches have pulses close to the heart beatings.This is the time of the nocturnal men. When darkness descends, men are the synonyms to the roguish bull. The skimpily clad,short-and-clutching-the-body clothes will be interpreted as invitation for rape.

After the middle ages Europe has undergone tremendous transformations. In the 18th century Law has gravitated towards the victim. The shackles of slavery and autocracy were crunched under the indomitable and wringing hunger for liberation that led to the opening up of pathways for women liberation.In 1700 Mery Asfal opened up a discourse on female emancipation.When the state does not want authoritarianism why should a family have?She asked.When there is autocracy in family,the nation can not wriggle out it. The question Why does male is born as independent and women as slaves has been seething in 1700. Asfal ends it by asking whether it is not slavery to live in with the vacillating ,unpredictable and one-sided male commandments. Voltaire has said earlier that the language of authority is 'I will decide what you should do'. The western women had a trek with the novel laboratory of renaissance.

What happened in India?

There were women in India who debated with Yatnavalkan on Upanishad.It was Saraswathi Devi who asked the final question to Sancharacharya on his escalation to the highest pedastal of knowledge. There were woman who led the army,won the battles.In 1925 the congress president was a lady.Before Britain had a women Prime Minister ,India had one 13 years back.India had women president .Despite all, why Indian women are deprecated?

Why we had bestial men amidst us?

The feudalistic remnants still lingers in our thoughts,in our behaviors. Complete subjugation is what the feudalism demanded.The same is what men expects from women.The man takes himself as the center of power.There was no relation in the same plain.Society and individuals are in separate strata. The consummate submission of individuals are seen in BhagavatGeetha. God,King,LandLord,peasants.The social status also flows down from the top like the routes of Ganga.First from heaven to the Sivas head,then to the Himalayas,to the valleys,finally to the sea. All in strata.

These feudalistic traits have been rewritten in to the family. Faithful wife is good wife,The wife who reels in the restrictions is a good wife.The restricts are defined by the power centers. Belief is all,Belief is karma,Karma is the heaven. Empathy,ethos etc are the words that came along with feudalism.(RS Sharma). All these are the largess the rich served to the poor,the man bestows to the women.

Male was located in the center stage of Feudal Hierarchy.The caste and religious sanctions were also built for that. Democracy has become only a talk of elections. Criticism which had to be cardinal in any discourse has become eulogy .The Renaissance models have ended up on political freedom.The renaissance which consecrated a better God in the place of the existing one remained in the outer layers of democracy.Inside it the vested interests lived unhurt.The feudal mores were never challenged.The women liberty remained as the largess and sympathy of male. The tragedy was complete with the import of the Victorian morality through the British rulers in India.Queen Victoria who looked down on the kisses and embraces tarnished the ebullient aesthetic concepts of the manifestations of human love depicted in the temple murals and sculptures. Queen Elizabeth's dictum that 'Rich ladies should not go out for work 'was in concurrence with the Indian feudal fiets. There was no free interceptions on the imported ethos and the feudal morals.The constricts and the falsehood created psychics .The patients inside the holly apparels looked even at the shadows of women with lust.They licked on the self-satisfaction of private rights when women were subjugated. This has parallels in the narcissism derived by by the foot-soldiers who killed people in the Nazi-camps.

The blood at the alter of Delhi is the sword-edge hived at the demon-faces at Delhi.The never-ending question is 'Man..what resides in your minds!Is it Satan or angel .The roaring death at Delhi is the Boiling sea,the mirror in the grave.

Delhi girl -should she have a name

2013-01-03T03:18:00.000-08:00

Damini came from nowhere and nameless. She agonized us,stripped us ,splintered our conscience and also roosted in our hearts as a pain. She left us in a smoldering fireside.She became the excruciating pang for the whole nation beyond any algometre could define.She pulled at the heart strings of the nation.

The country in one spirit wept bitter tears of remorse for her,rallied to the streets in anguish,voiced resent before the armory of the crowned Bonaparte.They crowded around Rahsina Hills chilled to the bone, cried out loud their unwillingness to be compromised with the savagery that humbles even the cannibals,with great conviction and honesty.The whole nation was behind them who invested Delhi braving the glacial days with ferocious show of fearlessness, a rare trait, that may not find many takers.Casts,creeds or color did not barricade them.The nation stood frozen at the nerve-racking trauma of the girl being pounded by the ghastly in humaneness.The country kept her close to its bosom and stood by her side as a mother, as a sister and as a daughter.It was a unique spectacle of strength and unity, rare but relishing.

Battling In the hospital brushed with death , the woman who had bravely resisted the marauding monsters, refused to be subjugated.In the spur of the wakeful moments amidst the oscillating flights between consciousness and comatose ,she demonstrated her grit and love for life which even flabbergasted the doctors attending on her. At one such moment she wrote a note : “Mother, I want to live.”

The horrid and bestial act of driving an L shaped rod in to her intestines through her reproductive organs pounding and pulping the whole inside to a soup!how horrible that can not be explained.The most expertise doctors shuddered on the spectacle. "She was courageous in fighting for her life for so long against the odds but the trauma to her body was too severe for her to overcome," Kelvin Loh, chief executive officer of the Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore said in a statement announcing her death from multiple organ failure. We should bow our heads with self-contempt.

India with the heritage of much feted ancient culture with a blizzard of female deities is the worst place for a woman.The Thomson Reutors survey says that India ranks with Afghanistan, Congo and Somalia as one of the most dangerous places for women. New Delhi has the highest number of sex crimes among India's major cities, with a rape reported on average every 18 hours, according to police figures. Government data show the number of reported rape cases in the country rose by nearly 17 percent between 2007 and 2011.

Last year, 24,206 cases of rape were registered in police stations across India. Acts of violence registered against women in 2010 total around 2,13,585. Swayam, a Kolkata-based NGO, asserts that between 2005 and 2009, when the overall crime rate rose by 16%, crimes against women rose by 31%. Statistics are nothing but irrigation of data and here it is staggering and can not always be sullied with.

Prof.Meenakshi Thampan ex-MP from CPI writes:"Only 25% of the cases pertaining to atrocities on women are reported.From this only 30% of the cases reach to the courts. 50% of these cases reaching to the courts are being settled under outside-compromises during the trial .In those cases where the predators are convicted after the 'due process of law ',it takes decades to reach a final verdict undergoing the lengthy processes of appeal,revisions,appeal in the supreme court etc.This would mean that only 1% of the cases reach to their logical end.These convictions which come after 10 to 15 years definitely divulges the inherent ineptitude in justice delivery."

The handles of justice are relays that are slow to operate.This yawning deficit in justice delivery by way of the snails pace in the administration of justice compounded with the lengthy and crucifying courtroom bashes half kills the vivacity of the rape victims and the witnesses.

The Supreme Court is vexed with the practice of the trial courts to flout the the directions of the apex court that ask to continue the trials on a day today basis until all the witness in attendance are examined.The fiet is that if the courts finds adjournment beyond the following day necessary ,the reasons for which have to be recorded. The Bench said:”We make it clear that the legislature has frowned upon granting adjournments on that ground. At any rate, inconvenience of an advocate is not a ‘special reason’ for bypassing the mandate of Section 309 of the Cr.PC [power to court to adjourn proceedings].”These strictures suggests that the judiciary should undergo a systematic overhaul.

Death sentences are now being administered in the rarest of rare cases of homicides.The award of capital punishment by session courts would happen only after the scrutiny of the high courts. As the gravity of punishment pronounced in the lower courts gets grave ,the interventions from higher courts would increase which ultimately delay justice.The only possible remedy to tide over this is to effect a qualitative procedural shift in cases related to atrocities on women and to the rape cases in particular, envisaged under IPC 376. Rape cases are bail-friendly and are seen in light vein as in a traffic irregularity or in a petty larceny.There must be a paradime shift to be brought into the landscape of bail conditions.The rules need to be teethed with stringent stipulations in rape cases in particular equating it with sections in IPC relating to major crimes like sedition and terrorism. Smt Meenakshi Thampan says:"As in continental jurisprudence, if the jury should prema-facia find the accused as culpable ,should be entitled to deny bail. While invoking punishment the accused should deposit with the court a substantial amount which in turn can be provided to the victim as interim compensation ".

The notion that a rape has actually said to have occurred if "the mail organ has a penetration in the body of the women" is to be dispensed with as any outrage on the women modesty could not be without the intent on sexual gratification.

"Those who are convicted in atrocities on women should be denied with all governmental facilities like pension and their voters id cards /ration cards /passport /aadhar cards /driving license and such other documents should elaborately profile on their conviction.If so the public can easily identify them which could be a deterrent against continuance of outrage on women."She adds.

It appears that Indian men carry with them the burden of a swollen and highly denotative ready- to- burst- sperm-bags, on the slightest of provocations.

Rape is a heinous hate crime.The penile code needs to be rewritten as Meena Kandaswamy puts it. She says: "The endless discourses of the elite point fingers everywhere: except at the real cause, which is the cultural sanction of rape in India.Beyond the false pride vested in virginity and the glorified burden of chastity, Indian women suffer because they are seen as sexual objects instead of sexual beings. Just as the Indian male imagination cannot include the possibility of a woman wanting to have sex, he cannot imagine a woman wanting to refuse sex. "

Rethna Kapoor writes in Hindu: " Rape is not simply about law and order, or about deranged individuals. Nor is the problem going to be solved by more laws, more police on our streets, more CCTV cameras on our buses or stiffer sentences for rapists." She believes that with the opening up of the market the young women armed with the education and self-consciousness are increasingly getting inroads in to the prohibited men's area and has potentially challenged the sense of superiority and entitlements of our patriarchal male culture.She says:"This idea of a woman as a fully formed human subject remains a difficult concept to embrace for the man."

The male axiom is that no rape is possible with out the approval of the women.Read this along with the gospel of an erudite lady(an agricultural scientist at a seminar organized by the police in Madhya Pradesh ) who proclaimed that the the victim of Delhi had lost her life only because she had provoked the rapists..“Had the girl simply surrendered (and not resisted) when surrounded by six men, she would not have lost her intestine. Why was she out with her boyfriend at 10 pm?”

Yes!She was the right candidate for the killing. These self appointed arbiters of moral norms would understand the sense of 'izath' only when the seething ordeal descends on their family.

At the time when the brutal nature of the assault has galvanized the country President Pranab Mukherjee’s son Abhijit Mukherjee took a swipe on the protesting women with his gallows humor “dented and painted” . He mauled the anti-rape agitation calling it a " nautanki "(drama)."Students walking the streets with candles... going to discotheques... our days students were different. These people did not look like students to me”, Mr Mukherjee told a TV channel fretting many eyebrows. His sister Sharmishtha Mukherjee soon was on her foot breaking the rank over the issue with her brother acknowledging that she was shocked by his statement. The later glide on the wings of out-of-context alibi was a crass cover-up ,even more nauseating and did not suffice to veil the avuncular expression of mysogeny.

Even a member of the CPM has volleyed insulting innuendos on the Bengal CM.To cap it all a bumptious member of the TMC has stepped further to the extend of making light of the abhorring incidence on Kolcutta Park Street as a bungling between a prostitute and a customer that went awry.

These antics of hubristic rhetoric in the evocative and emotional hours of sorrow was more than that any earnest citizen could digest.

Death is not the last word.Perhaps it can be a message,the divine message that propelled the solidified and sedimented empathy in the heart of man to gush out in the streets.

The political Sathraps of all hues who fish in the roiled waters ,rabble-rousers as they are, have laced the debate with their wacky humors stemmed from their patriarchal mindset. The mindless proscriptions on what women should wear,on venturing at night,on the virtues on modesty are the the manifestations of this frame set.

Political parties like congress,BJP are contemplating of deterrents like emasculation(Chemical castration)on the rapists,gallows and such other corporal punishments to the perpetrators.

As a contingency-response Jayalalitha announced a 13-point action plan to ensure women’s safety.“The Centre will be requested to amend the laws to ensure the maximum punishment of death penalty and chemical castration for those responsible for rapes. The offense should also be made non-bailable,” the Chief Minister said. She said steps would be taken to amend Goondas Act and set up Fast Track Mahila Courts in each district to investigate sexual assault cases in the State.This is at a time when an AIADMK member in the Parliament declared that he face charges on outrage to a woman’s modesty.

The immolation of the youngster obliges us to interrogate ourselves and it is the time for self introspection for all the political parties.

The political leadership in India is unscrupulous in that they have given away Lok Sabha election ticket to six persons and State election ticket to 27 persons, who declared that they were charged with rape — and six MLAs with rape cases now actually representing people in the Assemblies .While Parliament is debating the issue, two of its members — one of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam from Tamil Nadu and the other of the All India Trinamool Congress from West Bengal — have also declared that they face charges, such as cruelty and intent to outrage a woman’s modesty.

The group consisting the NEW( National Election Watch ) and ADR(the Association for Democratic Reforms said “by giving ticket to candidates who have been charged with crimes against women especially rape, political parties have been in a way abetting circumstances that lead to such events that they so easily but vehemently condemn in Parliament.” Are these honorable men ready to climb down to get purged and face their charges.Otherwise for whom this rib-tickling 'Kolaveries'.

The appalling cruelty inflicted on the mind and body of the girl cannot be contracted or simplified to a gang rape borne out of the sinister designs of the aberrations of some fallen riff-raffs. Rapes happen everywhere,engineered in the board room of the corporates,in the bedroom ,in the kitchen,in the urban efflorescence as in the filthy ghettos. It is an universal phenomena having its roots in the history. It comes masqueraded in a variety of ways stalking on the women and it is recurring. Rape in India is a complex issue as is everywhere with its roots not far to seek but in its colonial culture. It is an incontrovertibly complex can of worms that fails any quick-fix solutions, that does not call for knee-jerk reactions. It is a matter of effecting marked shift in the mindset as it is of a deterrent legislation. The edifice of the macho culture in India is is built on reading women through adversarial lenses. Women are conceived as personal chattels or as gadgets or gizmos for self-gratifications. Steps for empowerment of women by way of education ,dissemination of awareness in men with media support and incessant campaign to teach men to safely coexist with their counterparts must be the tenets of the debate. The Indian psyche should undergo a paradigm shift which should be the central theme for any discourse.

Should we hang them or castrate them as the Arubs do?We all want justice and we want it desperately.The instant justice,otherwise called as the 'mob justice- the lynch party of the mob' can be like seeing the tree for the woods. Terrorists like Kasab were served with due justice. Verbiages like emasculation,castration,gallows as anti-toxin to rape come close to the heals of jungle-justices. A cultured and civilized society could not be too vocal for such abrupt delivery of justice.

"The need of the hour is a dispassionate debate and inquiry into the critical changes that are required in societal attitudes," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rightly said in a statement.

All stood by her side.The three wings of the forces had issued advisories to all formations that they should not organize new year bashes as a show of sympathy to the berieved.Congress had decided to fall back from the new year festivities. Indira Ghandhi national open University decided to step back.Protest rallys continues in the capital.BJP conducted a meeting at Jandhar Mandhar to condole the death.Indian diaspora in the US, Australia and the UK held candle light vigils demanding stern punishment for the culprits and fast track courts to deal with sexual assault cases. In Melbourne, a large group of Indian men and women gathered in front of the Indian Consulate and lit candles to express their outrage over the incident. A memorial service was held in Sydney.

We are a genre castrated by amnesia.We are immune even to the worst kind of warnings.These obdurate resistance at JandarMandar shall whither away as the dust of the bluster settles down.The niggling pain and the eery reminiscences would elbow out from our bubble-brief collective memory.The victims narratives are ephemeral and we will have new subjects to debate.The authorities also plunge in to fresh controversies and new complexities.Old habits die hard.It will be the same rut of life.But we could not revel in that luxury of cliches nor can we resign to fate.It is no time to revel in ire or satire.The prosecution ,trial and the conviction should start fast-track and in phased manner to complete in a time frame.The lords in the capital should show alacrity and should be pledge bound.If needed the penal and penile codes are to be restructured and revamped.

A single muted minute can spawn in new breads of similar incidents.

Christmas

2012-12-25T02:41:00.001-08:00

C hrist’s birth embodies the simplicity in life. None can imagine a circumstance more miserable and dismal. The son of god took birth to lead a kindly light to righteousness, to redeem men from the sombre and forlorn life .The benign touch of God is there with every human being. Christmas teaches that all are sons of God and have equal rights to life. The greatness of god in the heights shall become peace on the earth. Christ takes birth in our hearts.

Jesus Christ’s birth is a pointer to his mission. God’s ways are mysterious! God stands by the poor, the destitute, the exploited and the downtrodden. He values them, whom the society considers valueless.

He comes as a deliverer, as a savior to the humanity. “My thoughts are not your neither are your ways my ways “says the Lord (Isa 55:8). Jesus was born with promising peace to the mankind “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”(luke2:14).

Jesus was denied the space in the inn where the elite spend the night in ecstasy and was destined to take birth in the manger of the steeple in Bethlehem. Now the inn which ones were the symbol of elites is not there, nobody kept it secure, but the manger is still there attracting lakhs as their holy land. The son of god was born at a place where grasses, cows, sheep, shepherds subsisted together, the blessed habitat where flowers, birds, insects all coexist. First Christmas messages are received by the shepherds, the marginalized people in the society. Shepherds in the Jewish society are the poorest race considered to be outcasts and even robbers, people who were nomads and without any permanent address. It was to these ‘wretched’ people, the message of joy was first delivered. This is the screen capture of the god’s intention to align with the downtrodden and the deprived. Thus shepherds in the lower rungs of the society were the first people to witness the holy birth. Thus the god has declared open his unflinching bias to the poor.

Jesus’ vision and his mission are already made clear from the events of his birth

The mother earth provides everything in plenty to his son. But the modern mortal who discredits the sanctity of this world lured by selfish gratifications becomes forgetful of the primordial message of Christmas. Christmas is an invitation to keep the garden of the God clean, verdure and beckons the sons of God to live in harmony by leading a truthful and selfless life in the service of his brethren. Swami Vivekanda says `the first step in the spiritual path is selfless service of humanity.’ Richness, rank and pedigree are not the relevant thing but a good heart is the basic for peace and tranquility. The restlessness that we behold in this universe is because of the absence of peace at heart. The reason for Children up in arms is not anything else. When we tread to wrongdoings, when selfishness sprouts ,as a corrective force Christ should be born in us.

the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the shadow of death
a light has dawned.”
Mathew 4:16

Christmas is not for earthly celebrations, but for spiritual values it symbolizes. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3:16). Christmas is the manifestation of the great love and its sharing.

The journey through bible is adventurous. Bible is the inner light. Jesus is the liberator who has entered in to history to emancipate the trampled and downtrodden.

Bible is the prayer beads of thoughts for the humanity. Christ is the cosmic singer. Bible is the shoulder bag in the tedious and lengthy journeys in search of the inner self.

Sri.MP.Appan the great orator, thinker and critique in Malayalam and a non-Christian who studied bible in depth wrote: When my heart traveled through bible with the eyes and liver of Christ I were able to subject world literature for a revisit. I reclaimed the spiritual light through reading the gospel. The knowledge of Christ was to me the unfathomable song. The Christ who engages in debates and dialectics fascinated me. Christ teaches us to talk with firm tongue.”

Christmas time are the days of dreams and delights, lighting's and gifts. It is the one festivity which transforms this world in to one of starred cities and starred villages.That is the delightful mega stage of stars. The shepherds saw the babe in the manger of a stable in the star city of Bethlehem. They felt that many crores of stars looking at the infant. The Christmas lamps stands symbolize this moment of wonder.

Sri.Appan further says :”Every mother on earth is incarnated in Mariyam.The key to the safety of the individual and the society is with Mariyam.” He observes that the tower of safety is the Christ himself and its keys lies in the hands of Mari yam.

Christ bartered his life for the well being of others knowing fully that there exists a belief that one who meats his death on cross is cursed .By selecting the cross for the mankind the messiah had sung a ballad of breach in his life.

Because we are human mortals we remain flawed. We fall short in many ways, in our daily lives and personal transactions. The man made sufferings caused due to the incessant wars being waged against his fellow man all over the globe over nationalistic jingoism, greed and lust know no bounds. The great irony lies in that the Muslims and Jews are fighting over Palestine where in Bethlehem resides.

Christmas is the time for celebrations. Every street is adorned with Christmas decorations and Christmas lights. Tableaux depicting the birth of Jesus Christ are set up in street corners. “It is a world of singing ca rollers and dancing Santas.“ Christmas tree studded with glittery red, yellow, green lights, twinkling star hangings and ginger-bread houses are the delights of Christmas. Christmas parties and brunches are the unavoidable luxury of Christmas nights. Thousands of people attend to the midnight masses, along with children singing Christmas carols. It is the time for renewing old friendship and feasts When Christmas is afoot with its celebration the world over, the birth of Jesus, the savior of mankind has itself turned in to a fete for lavishing crores in the market. Christmas is also being baptized and bulk-purchased by the global business culture in the market places.

Martin Luther’s song:
The God told his dear son
The greatest crown of the heart
Start your journey, its time for the mediation
Be a Savior for the lost
remove his weighty sin
Kill his enemy the death
resurrect him with you.

The song ends in the holiness of the cross.

The new chaos in BSNL

2012-11-14T22:25:00.000-08:00

Every thing around BSNL the telecom major are in a shambles. At a time when the HR of the cash strapped company must be acting as well-oiled and retrofitted lot ,slogging through the bitter and bruising battle for existence, a gruesome and deeply disconcerting news has come from Gaziabad. Mr Sukendra Pal ,the secretary of an employees union in BSNL died under mysterious circumstances at the Raj Nagar District Centre (RDC). The word in the street is that he has been beaten to death by the henchmen of a GM (Mr.Adesh Kumar)at the latter's office. The sequence of events led to a slanging match between the stake holders. The diseased it was reported has questioned the unholy economic intrigues between the officer and the contractors which in its natural turn exasperated the officer ending up in cold blooded murder. Post Morten reports point to the injury he has suffered on the head. The ghastly murder stands out in its sheer scale of hideousness and is the first in the annals of the Department.

The family of the BSNL union leader Sukhvinder Pal, who died at the Raj Nagar District Centre on October 22, has demanded a CBI probe into the matter and transfer of the case to Delhi.

"My father's murder was the result of a strong nexus of the top brass and contractors of BSNL," alleged the victim's son, Rohan. "We have lost hope of getting justice in Uttar Pradesh, so we have written letters to the PMO, NHRC and Uttar Pradesh CM demanding transfer of the case to Delhi and a full-fledged investigation by the CBI," he added.

Times Of India quotes the Station Officer of Kavi Nagar police station, Sudhir Tyagi as saying , that there were two injury marks on the deceased's body — one on the head and the second below his eyes. He said "We have received complaints from both the parties. We have registered an FIR against the GM and four others under Sections 302, 147, 148 and 149, while on the basis of the GM's complaint another FIR has been registered under Section 332 and other sections of IPC." The exact cause of death could be established only after getting the results of further examination of the viscera .

INS reports quoting Ghaziabad Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Prashant Kumar that Sukhendra Pal the diseased had been called on Monday morning by the BSNL general manager (GM) for some work-related discussion, which apparently went awry and resulted in the union leader's death. Report also says that in his blatant negation,the GM, Adesh Kumar Gupta, charged that Sukhendra Pal barged into his office, hit him on his face, tore his clothes and ransacked the office furniture.In the meantime, security guards came in and dragged Sukhendra Pal away. He scuffled with the guards and in a fit of rage, collapsed on the staircase.

The Employees Union(BSNLEU) claimed that the GM was outraged as it had earlier submitted a written complaint to the Central Vigilance Commission flagging “corrupt practices” in the branch, following which there had been a series of transfers of its members and the union had been asked to vacate its office.

The artists of violence are missing and are away from the reach out of the police even after 4 weeks have passed since the grueling episode.As the authorities grope in the dark ,the employees are on a country wide stir to book the accused.BSNL Employees Union conducted a massive rally at Ghaziabad, condemning the police and also demanding the immediate arrest of Adesh Kumar Gupta, GM, BSNL Ghaziabad, and other accused persons. More than 1500 comrades participated in the rally from each and every SSA of UP (West) Circle and also from the neighboring Haryana Circle.

Three lakh executive and non-executive employees of DoT were absorbed in BSNL when it was formed in October 2000. But the 1,600 ITS officers who hold top management posts in BSNL opted out and were allowed to continue with government status on deputation for five years in BSNL.The time limit expired in 2005. They still cling on the deputation except a very few despite four chances given to get absorbed in BSNL.

The mindless killing has been staged when the BSL is floundering and mangled by myriads of problems contributed by its own internal choes in the administration, widening the deep seated trust deficit between the officers and employees of the organization. The company is in a ship wreck facing its ever increasing problems of economic ordeal.The employees and second line executives in the hierarchy are embittered and feels the swaggering ITS ,the pantheon of gods in BSNL are riding roughshod over them ,quaffing their pint of blood.The executives and non-executives feel badly let down by the overarchingly dominating ITS Bonoparts sitting in high pedestals.The warring factions are engaged in a pathological hatred ingrained in their blood.

Sri.Namboothiri the national leader of BSNLEU says that the ITS officers are becoming more and more savages out-of-synch with the civilized society.What happened to Sukaendra Pal can befall on anyone else and is anybodies guess.The management is eager to protect their kin with all the law and justice being flouted in day light.

“It is understood now that instead of completing the repatriation process, DoT is preparing a Cabinet Note to ensure that the present ITS officers are deputed to BSNL on a permanent basis,” said V. A. N. Namboodiri, Convener of the BSNL workers’ union.

He said that the proposed move would create two categories of employees, one section who are absorbed and the other on deputation, creating much confusion, as has been seen in the case of the Air India-Indian Airlines merger.

Rules are being made for the ITS ,by the ITS in BSNL.The telecom districts are their fiefdom and is run on their whims and the full authority is centralized on them. They treat the executives and non-executives as steerage passengers.The greatest tomfoolery the non-ITS in BSNL have done was to get absorbed meekly with out hindsight.The ITS cognoscenti who are supposed to run the service ,kept the powder dry ,waiting for the ship jump to swim to the safe havens of Government positions reserved for them. The non-ITS executives associations that bask in the role of squat-on the-court-varanda revolutionaries ,try to pull down every time a fellow crab crawls up the bucket. The born-waste-raglifter non-executives associations are in the anarchy of political polarizations and ambitions.They could only pummel the pillow with the fist with their untiring list of complaints.

Mr V.A.N.Namboodiri the veteran leader quips;“The workers are demanding that if the ITS officers are given permanent deputation, they also should be treated as being on permanent deputation and granted all the benefits of the government service as granted to ITS officers. There should be no discrimination between the two sections,” . Either all employees should be absorbed in BSNL or all employees should be on deputation, he adds.

The workers are peeved that top level officers belonging to the Indian Telecom Service (ITS) cadre are given increased transport allowance and other 14 allowances while many they enjoyed like medical allowance and LTC are systematically removed with out remorse.

The immolation of Mr Pal is a symbol. A symbol of the telecom workers in India caught in the cruel arrogance of hierarchical power generals in BSNL.

The brazenness of the feudal cults which silences the truth with the ghastly power which it wields can not be tolerated by any one having a tad of self-esteem left.

Malana-the lamp to the future

2012-11-13T01:40:00.000-08:00

Malala ,a young girl in her teens is in the tidings in a scale that should make the UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon's special envoy for global education,former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, to broach her name to the Swedish Academy for the Nobel peace prize.

Malala Yousafzai,The 15 year old teenager activist is fighting for her life in the Queens Elizabeth Hospital in Burmingham following an attack on her by the Taliban "agents of Satan". The sin that she has committed is that she had worked for the education of the Muslim girls in her home city of Mingora in the Swat in west Pakistan wherein an edict of Taliban that no girls could attend school after 15 January 2009 is in force.Ziauddin Yousafzai, her father speaking after arriving in Britain to visit Malala with his wife and two sons, said that when she fell, Pakistan stood and the world rose.

Yousafzai told a press conference in Birmingham;"This is a turning point. In Pakistan, for the first time, all political parties, Urdus, Christians, Sikhs, all religions prayed for my daughter." He added: "She is not just my daughter, she is everybody's daughter.

"The doctors say that the bullet grazed her brain and traveled through her head and neck before lodging in her left shoulder.

Yousafzai was largely on the footsteps of her father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, who is a poet and an educational activist , running a chain of schools known as the Khushal Public School, named after a famous Pashtun poet, Khushal Khan Khattak.

She started writing diary for the BBC in Urdu in 2009 under a pseudonym"Gul Makai" on the instance of her father at a time when Taliban militants led by Maulana Fazlullah were taking over the Swat Valley, banning television, music, girls’ education.She wrote on the psychological trauma the female children in the Swath had to suffer.

Her BBC blogging identity was being revealed in articles as early as December 2009. She also began appearing on television to publicly advocate for female education.

Death threats were announced in newspapers and she began to get direct threats slammed on her door.Soon she became a celebrity in Pakistan.

In October 2011, Desmond Tutu announced Yousafzai's nomination for the International Children's Peace Prize . She was awarded Pakistan's first National Youth Peace Prize later in December.

Malala Yousafzai is now heading for the direct confrontation with the Taliban.

In a meeting held in the summer of 2012, Taliban leaders unanimously decided to kill her. On 9 October 2012, a Taliban gunman shot Yousafzai in the head while she was on her way back home after taking an exam with two classmates in north-west Pakistan.

The attempt on the girl raised furor worldwide . Public anger mounted against the shooting in several Pakistani cities the day after the attack. Pakistani officials offered a $105,000 (10 million rupee) reward for information leading to the arrest of the attackers.

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World leaders unanimously denounced the attack.President Barack Obama said that news of the shooting was "reprehensible, disgusting and tragic". United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called it a "heinous and cowardly act". Pakistan's president described it as an attack on "civilized people".

The singer Madonna at a concert in Los Angeles the day of the attack announced; "This made me cry," Madonna said, "The 14-year-old schoolgirl who wrote a blog about going to school. The Taliban stopped her bus and shot her. Do you realize how sick that is?"

The United Nations has declared November 10 as 'Malala Day' in honor of the teenage rights activist Malala Yousafzai."This Saturday (November 10th) will see Malala Day, a global event to show the world that people of all creeds; all sexes, all backgrounds and all countries stand behind Malala," Brown said.

After the event,the media around the world is getting increasingly polarized in to pro Taliban and Pro-American. US is emerging themselves as saviors the extend to which Taliban goes brutal . While the Malala incidence is catching up with the imaginations of the world,the atrocities on Pakistani civilian by the drone attacks are pushed to behind the curtains.The Lakhs of names of children like Vaseer, Tharique Azees are not heard by us because the predator here are the Americans. America is judge, jury and adjudicator.

Former Pak cricket captain Imran Khan says;"I have always maintained that these drone attacks are counter productive apart from violating all humanitarian laws. America is stooping lower than the Talibans".

Obama gave no indication that he would halt or alter the drone program which according to Mr Khan is an action in which "about 98 percent of those killed are either lower level militants or innocent civilians while only two percent are high level targets."