Friday, March 25, 2011

ABOUT INDIA AND CHINA

Let us be clear about it. China is FAR ahead of India, many many milestones away. There’s no doubt about it. We don’t need a Freidman or Kaplan to tell us the obvious. BUT if anyone thinks India is losing out to China, they couldn’t be more wrong.

I am proud to be an Indian. India is a thriving democracy. This is a fact just as sure as the above fact is. In a democracy we take everyone along with us when we move forward. This necessarily takes time. We are a complex peoples. No country in the world is as diverse and no other country in the world has a representative of almost all the races known to man. These are not small things. Anyone will tell you that.

Therefore, unlike in a communist country where freedom is regulated and people are ordered to think and feel, we in India are free to think and feel. We need to be convinced that every forward step we take is agreeable to ALL of us. This necessarily takes time. BUT the end result is also necessarily better - the preferences and collective wisdom of such a vast peoples is incomparable. Think of all the pent up emotions of a billion people that have been ordered to move ahead. The explosion is going to be horrific. Much better to express yourself every now and then, even if the rate of progress must be sacrificed along the way.

And unlike non-communist capitalist countries that are free to think, but race ahead with only the fit, leaving everything and everyone else behind, you get to be a world class economy, you get to be number one, but we all know what happened to the man who left his wife, children, family and friends behind, exploited everyone he came across to get ahead – He did get ahead, but collapsed in the end. Greed always leaves egg in the face.

The CWG says a lot about us. Chaos until the curtains unveil – and then India, even with India’s most hated man Kalmadi around, shows everyone that we are second to none. India is the ideal country. It is a country that ought to be. It’s a country like no other. It’s a country that all other countries must emulate and aspire to be. We are not here to win the battle were here to win the war. We’re here for the long run. Let the others run till then…… Our time is coming. India is a ‘lamba race ka ghoda….’

Er….. on hindsight I should have at least written it around August?



November 2010

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

JAPAN AND THE USUAL SUSPECTS


Sorry to be a party pooper guys, but WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT DOWN YOUR NUCLEAR PLANTS ALREADY??? For Fukushima, a cement burial a la Chernobyl or anything else is fine by me – just cut out the helicopter water spraying OK?? If that works, we can next try to empty the world’s oceans with a spoon? A level 7 nuclear danger is way too high for me and now the Far East isn’t looking too far to me now – in fact it’s getting too damn close for me. And my deepest sympathies to the victims too – a 9 Richter earthquake combined with a tsunami IS really too much.

Japan is of course in the ‘Pacific Ring of fire’, those places that have fault lines that make them susceptible to earthquakes. But this current tragedy was a lethal combination of an earthquake combined with a tsunami, giving Japan its worst disaster after World War II, when it set out to rule the world and was stopped by the US – Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

What I’ve always wondered is why Japan’s map is dotted with nuclear plants when it has a history of earthquakes and is in the ring of fire, for heaven’s sake!! Wrong time to bring it up, but I used to talk about it to no one who was interested!! I can see Madam Merkel giving a superior ‘look’ (Germany forbids nuclear plants in its territory) and Sarkozy furrowing his forehead (France is a huge fan of nuclear energy).

Just imagine, heaven forbid, something like Japan’s tragedy happening in India!! Minus Japan’s STRICT building rules and highly posh disaster management system in place, for every 1 dead now, we’d easily have 10 thousand (at the very least – I’m not even kidding). What is wrong with us Indians?? Post the devastating Tsunami that struck a few years back, after pouring pots of milk into the ocean (the stupidest thing to do – Which marine life guzzles milk? It would only asphyxiate all the living organisms in the waters – luckily there’s enough water in the ocean to dilute the stuff) every now and then, the locals in good old Indian – thrift style, have already started stealing the warning systems placed in the waters for a Tsunami alert. At last count there were 3 left!!!

And we complain about the Government!! But little wonder we complain about the Government - because as I often say, the Government is nothing but many ‘you and I’ s coming together and I guess I know myself best just as you do yourself!!

Happy Holi and happy complaining!!







20th March 2011

Thursday, March 17, 2011

EQUALITY IN THE BEDROOM – THE GLOBALISED BEDROOM

How often have we heard that so and so is such a ‘stud’, such a ‘man’ because he scored with so many women. Men especially, and the whole world apparently look upto this man. Then you have the wicked whispers about the cheap woman. The ‘slut’ actually, who sleeps around. She was intimate with so many men. How cheap! No one looks upto her and even the men she beds don’t have a lot of respect for her. Men all around find it justified to eve tease her or pass lewd comments. God knows what other forms of harassment she will have to put up with, especially in a so called conservative society like ours.

Why must we have this sort of discrimination for women? Isn’t it all basically the same? That it’s a matter of individual choice. Why can’t we let people be? If a man chooses to expose himself to dozens of women, so be it; provided of course that it is consensual and legal. Why can’t it be the same for women? If a woman wishes to voluntarily expose herself to dozens of men, why interfere in her personal choice? That would be truly liberal.

What then happens to ‘good’? Sex is the one topic that will never be resolved as long as man exists. He can’t do without it, can’t condemn it, can’t justify it, and can’t have the same set of rules for him or his neighbour.

Funnily enough the same is true of ‘good’. Man can never have enough of it. He breaks it, bends it, skirts it, buries it, bombs it and strangles it; and yet he can’t do without it. So he digs it up, resuscitates it, glorifies it, honours it and bandages it up.

What to do? shall we simply bury it as another paradox of man? And then dig it up later to look at it from all angles? I have a suggestion – Why not accept it as is? I’m talking of ‘sex’ and ‘good’. And no, I’m not saying combine it to say ‘sex is good’! That’s too simplistic.
Why not tweak the old grey cells a bit?

Man needs to be good or at least have ‘good’ around. The worst pedophile or mass murderer still wants everyone else to be ‘good’ to him. Even in jail, inmates still complain about in-justice if everyone but him is served a meal. So you may be a Hitler and mass murder thousands of Jews, but you still want your frauline Eva Braun to be good to you.

Why not settle the issue as best we can? Why don’t women stop trying to copy the womanising asses? I hardly think its emancipating to expose yourself to dozens of men who don’t care about you. There are better areas to catch up with in the emancipation department. Why not strive for equality at status quo? Why not show the men that it’s emancipated to be a woman on these issues? (Actually it is!) Why not show the men that it’s cool to not sleep around?
that it’s great to be a rejecter than a multi acceptor?
why not promote exclusivity and monogamy?

The idea is not to ‘catch up’ with the men in the Blackbook department.
The idea is to show the men the sexiness of a women’s world of No Blackbooks.
The idea is not to make lady studs, but to show the men how stupid it is to be a stud in the first place. Aren’t studs animals by the way?

If you see a mad man running around naked, isn’t it better to give him a shirt and teach him to how wear clothes rather than taking yours off?? So why not strive for an equalized bedroom behavior? Why not teach the men that monogamy rocks and that studs are not cool?? That would be a truly globalised bedroom. Now you know why they say, there’s not an area globalism hasn’t touched?



October 2010

WHAT A CRYING SHAME

I read in the Times of India a few days back, that Mizoram, my home state in the North-east and the second most literate state in India, a 100% Christian and tribal state, was to have it’s very first woman pastor in ‘Pi.Hnuni’ (Unfortunately so unpronounceable). This is of course; provided that she will be given the go ahead by several bodies that count and all of us that don’t!

What perplexed me is the resilient and stubborn resistance she is being offered by most Mizos (as we, the inhabitants of Mizoram are called). In the first place, instead of fainting at the shame of not ever having produced a woman pastor in all these decades, which I used to attribute to the lackadaisical approach that Mizos had about it, there are in fact, many incorrigible, anti – forward looking, logic devoid and destructive male chauvinists (who sadly include many women themselves) who parrot some inane incomprehensible ‘isms’ to attempt to bolster their ‘reed will stand in a tsunami’ theories about why women, period, cannot ‘attain’ the holy status of a man.

From what I hear, the lady in question, in a typical, “so you want to be one of us? – prove it every step, compete and match every one of us” contest, had to prove she was all that most pastors put together are. At a relatively young age she was already the head of a theological college – the first Baptist one, no less, in Mizoram, and I trust the conditions to get there must have been equally strenuous.

What is even more disturbing – yes there’s more - is that these notorious elements as their type are wont to be, are degenerating to the point of quoting from the good Book– the Holy Bible no less, to prove their twisted agenda, which has as aboutas much righteousness as Paris Hilton has!! Lets not talk about sense, since there clearly is none.

The bottom line is that this proves what I oft quote – that Mizoram is a thoroughly male dominated place. Even our sex-less, non gender biased religion, which I’m terribly glad of, must be subject to such vile subjections, twisted to the same contortions that contortionists in other religions condone killings in the name of religion. We brand them terrorists. So we don’t kill …… yet. But are you and I theoretically any better? And this then is the ultimate paradox – that I, support this obnoxious line of thought, just because, as a Mizo, I’m a part of the teeming masses that make up the majority, my majority. What a shame! What a shame!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Is there anyone who STILL thinks that Talwar is innocent? Its a bloody shame that he's a dentist; worse - so is his wife -Nupur. Shamelessly walking around trying to defend himself for KILLING his own daughter. He's really too much. Unsurprisingly, his wife supports him. Pathetic! Speaks volumes about the actual status of women in India.

He's a living advertisement for why we must have capital punishment. I'm fed up of watching this shameless couple walking around town. If Mrs. Nupur thinks she's better off because she didnt actually commit the crime - forget it. Her compliance and support to her husband is sick!! Her attitude and body language say she's less guilty or not at all. But sorry woman, you aint any better.