SPINELESS TERRORISTS

Just hours after news reached on our television screens of the Srinagar blasts, another series of blasts shook all of us.

7 highly planned bomb blasts have taken place in the local trains of Mumbai, and as of now, 171 people have been reported dead, with the numbers expected to rise. The saboteurs are telling India that they are alive, kicking and have the capacity to strike at any place in India, at a time of their choosing.

Many of them who died are regular people like you and me. And the timing was perfect - past 6 pm - the time when many leave work and head home.
The packed trains, the uncontrollable crowd. Something like this was waiting to happen. Many a times, when I used to see crowded places, I looked around the sea of people and would think, ‘this kind of situation is every terrorist's wet dream’. And this time, the dream came true.

Whom do they exactly want to target? The middle class men returning from a day’s work? Or the working ladies knitting sweaters on their way home? Or the dreamy students discussing home-work and love? One thing is for sure, they have got the nerve of our country – the middle class man!

Sadness and immense rage are the only two emotions one can have at a time like this. As the images are being broadcasted over here in Delhi, I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of tension and mayhem which the people must be experiencing in Mumbai right now. The feeling of never seeing your loved ones again. The feeling of helplessness.

Why do such terrible things have to occur? What kind of a sick mind is responsible for an inhuman act such as this??

We feel gratified with out pour of condemnation of these acts across the world and forget about the masterminds and feel satisfied with nabbing petty terrorist who executed these acts (that too is not sure). With every such incident, we all sing song, that these people are no human beings & have no religion and go back to our daily chores and don't bother to understand the agenda and long-term goals of these pathetic creatures.

But despite all the anger, hatred and sadism...it is reassuring to know that courage and kindness still exist in the heart of some. For many hours after the blast occurred...NO police help...or help from the government came. In the face of such a calamity, it wasn't the inefficient "system" that responded...but rather the common man of India. Now I don't care how cliched that may sound, but that's exactly what happened. People who heard the blast came rushing to the scene to carry the injured to nearby hospitals themselves.
This is the common man of Mumbai.
This is the resident of "the rudest city in the world". Carrying bodies of injured and dead, drenched in blood, on their shoulders. Wanting to give blood to someone they've never seen or heard of. Pictures of this incident that I can never forget are of bulk of handbags, supposedly having cash in them, lying near the tracks, with nobody bothering to take away the money, because they are busy saving the lives of their owners, totally strangers to them, because that seems more precious to them and people distributing water and food on the streets, free of cost, to the stranded passengers of the trains. It shows we certainly know how to prioritise.

Well...GET LOST Reader's Digest, and an even bigger GET LOST to whoever thought up that stupid survey. I doubt that the people of ANY OTHER country would react in such a selfless way to come and help their fellow man, even though its not in any way a part of their profession.

No daughters…. only daughter-in-laws!

Modern technology is helping parents in Asia indulge in hideous practice – killing off their girl child. The Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques Act is powerful indeed, but rarely enforced. Passed, after India realised that modern medical techniques such as ultrasound scans were frequently being used to identify female fetuses - which are then aborted, the Act requires the registration of all ultrasound machines, and bans doctors from revealing the sex of the foetus to expectant parents. Abortion is legal in India but testing the gender of a foetus is not. But still, the abortions go on. The law was an attempt to reverse India's rampant use of sex-selective abortion, and the lopsided sex ratio this has produced. Till now, just one doctor has been put in prison after telling an undercover investigator that her foetus was female, and hinting that he can help her abort it. Even that was possible after a long court battle by a determined Govt. team. The difficulty in implementing the law has been that it is hard to get information, both from the doctor and the parents, because the matter is often kept secret by both the parties, as both of them believe they are benefited. This situation also toughens obtaining evidence to find the culprits.

If such trends continue, the future could be nightmarish. The existence of all those millions of frustrated Asian bachelors will boost crime and lawlessness. There is also a fear that the shortage of girls will create a hyper-macho society.

Men with money will be able to afford wives, who will quickly become a status symbol. In pockets of India, this has already begun. Sharing wives will become a trend. Often, men who think they have got a good deal on a particularly beautiful bride will sell her at a profit.

The desire for sons has created a severe shortage of marriageable young women. As their value rises, unscrupulous men are trading them around the subcontinent and beyond as if they were a mere commodity. Strict laws have been put in place to prevent the practice. Indian parents want boys because girls are seen as a heavy financial burden: the parents have to provide an expensive dowry for their weddings, while sons will bring money into the family when they marry, and have better job prospects. Also, they believe, its the sons who carry forward the family legacy and they must have sons to perform their last rites and only then will they get salvation.

In the villages of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, abortions of baby girls have become so common that the shortage of women is severe. In some parts of India, so many female foetuses have been aborted that there aren't enough women for the men to marry. The result is a thriving market in women who have been bought from poorer parts of India. Unable to find wives locally, the men have resorted to buying women from the poorer parts of India. Just 25 miles from the glitzy new shopping malls and apartment complexes of Delhi is a slave market for women. When we think of such villages, it is hard to believe we’re just an hour and a half's drive from the bright new India that is being courted as an ally by the US and attracting investors from across the world.

The worst part of the story is that even the men who go out searching for brides don’t see any connection between female foeticide and shortage of brides. After they get married, they also don’t want a girl child. But they don’t realise that the boys the are giving birth to will also face the same problem, in a much more severe manner, once they grow up. In fact, it is the mindset of the people that need to change. Otherwise, covertly these incidents of terminating pregnancy will continue to occur. Girl child is viewed as a burden in Indian society and the boy as a blessing. This is the thinking that requires transformation.

Mumbai – Rudest City???

In the last 24 hours enough ink has been used on this debate about of the rudest city in the world. This of course refers to the recently published The Readers Digest Survey of various cities around the world to find out which one is the rudest and I am surprised to read that our Mumbai has got the title.

Mumbai has been voted as the most rudest city in the world because they, allegedly, don’t open doors for others in public buildings, shopkeepers don’t say ‘thank you’ when a purchase was made and they don’t help people in picking up the papers dropped on a busy street.

I believe there is no shortage of cities in India that will confess them to be far less civilised than Mumbaikars. People of Mumbai are much more polite than of many of it’s counterparts. Mumbai is not the rudest city in India; the world is a far cry.

There is a problem with the structure of the questionnaire. In india if a guy opens a door for an unknown girl, the girl will think he is making advances towards her. Many shopkeepers are not educated enough for such formal pleasantries. How can you expect people to pick up what you dropped when they are all rushing to catch that commuter train in a crowded railway platform? Obviously Mumbai would not have figured well in such a survey.

What exactly is the definition of rudeness? How are the criterions set? Is it fair to make comparisons across cultures?
These are not as simple questions as they appear to be in the first glance. For these allegedly rude people, there are aspects of behavior about which they are very particular. They spit on roads but remove their shoes before entering somebody’s home; they don’t thank everybody but they don’t even address any stranger without the jee suffix. The use of aap instead of tum underlines the Indian respect for age and seniority. Leaving shoes outside the house and places of worship reflects the ritually pure status of home and temple. Let alone Mumbai, we seldom find children addressing their seniors with their names like Mr. or Mrs.-so-and-so. We will always address them as uncle or aunty. This shows how inviting we are to establish relations with strangers.

Clearly, polite behavior is culture specific. Every culture defines its own code of conduct.

Politeness is a shallow promise of good intentions, not too much can be read into it. A willingness to say please is not necessarily a sign of helpfulness or surrender, but merely a way to create an aura of harmony. Politeness creates an illusion of harmony and it is this illusion that cultures combine to create.

The truth is that no society can be rude. Individuals should not be compared with a common yardstick, even societies themselves can’t be. Standards can be applied only if all other things are kept constant. Its like saying: cricket is fairer than football. Both the games are fair in their own respect. One can’t compare two different rulebooks.

It is true that we don’t say ‘sorry’ or ‘thank you’ or ‘please’ too often. But there is a very basic reason behind it. And the reason is that these words don’t belong to our language. Many few people have grown up with this language and fewer people use it in their casual conversations. Now the first question that comes to our mind is that why don’t we use their Hindi alternatives? The answer to that is that we have not grown up saying them either, to the extent that we feel awkward saying ‘kshma kar deejiye’ or ‘dhanyavaad’ or ‘kripya’. Influenced by the west, we are embracing their taboos and are adding them to our own. But the problem is that the new rulebook is not acceptable to a vast majority of Indians, and hence, we see this disconnect between the idea of politeness and rudeness.

Silly Dreams

In 1931 Sardar Patel said,” No one would starve in independent India. Its grain would not be exported. Clothes would not be imported by it. Its leaders would not use a foreign language and finding justice in it would neither be costly nor difficult.”

Had he been alive today, I am sure he would have regretted fighting for a cause like this. Or if he knew this would be the condition of his beloved country even after 56 years of his much wanted ‘independence’, he would not have bothered to fight for her independence.

Lacks of people starve to death every year in this ‘independent India’. 23 Cr Indians lived below poverty line in 2004-05 and 3 Cr is the estimated number of Indian children who work, making the world’s largest child labour force.
The best quality grain never reaches the people of this country because it is always kept for exports. Exports are never brought down even if our country is facing famine.
Indian cotton is what attracted Britishers but still the clothes we wear on daily basis are imported from China. And the fashion conscious people prefer Armani and D&G to Rohit Bal and Ritu Beri.
Speaking English is still considered as a status symbol in our country and even in our parliament. Any leader who knows even a single line in English will not spare the chance to flaunt it.
And the last point that Sardar Patel wished was justice – neither costly nor difficult. I won’t say it’s the most important thing but I feel it’s in the most rotten and wrecked state today. It’s both costly and difficult. In fact, more than being victimized, it is getting justice that is more tiresome and annoying. Our idea of justice now is actually in a more sorry state than in British rule. In British regime, they gave a good reason, at least, on records for killing a person. But in our ‘independent India’ nobody even needs that. Look at Manu Sharma; he killed Jessica Lal in front of 500 people and even after 7 years after that incident he is as free as you and me. And the most ironic and shameful thing is that he was acquitted because of ‘lack of evidence’!

These things make me less respectful towards the freedom fighters of our country because even if they had not fought for our independence we wouldn’t be in a worse state. At least we would not have felt as much guilt of wounding the dreams of those who gave up their lives for us.

When I read this line in some magazine, I laughed at him and his unrealistic intuition. But now I feel extremely heartfelt sorry for him.