Call for capital punishment in retrospect

I was aghast when I read this news item this morning in the local newspapers. It spoke about a case for euthanasia being filed before the Supreme court of India.
The court has since then admitted the plea.
Here are a few highlights of the article.
i. Shanbaug was a nurse before she was attacked by a hospital sweeper who then tried to strangle her to death
ii. Permanent injuries to her nervous system has left her vegetative since then. This happened in 1973!
iii. It has been thirty six years since she lived by herself and has always been on life support and been force fed
iv. Her bones are brittle, her teeth have decayed and she is living a sub human life!
v. Her parents are dead and none of her siblings care to visit her any more.
vi. The most shocking thing is that the rapist sweeper served a sentence of Seven Pithy years for rape, attempted murder and robbery all combined.


I was enraged to read that the rapist got off so easily. How can this be, especially considering the consequences of his act. Did it not then matter to the courts of law that the victim was in a permanent vegetative state?

I'm still seething and am unable to coherently communicate my spite for this character. May he rot in hell!
But I say lets track him down and hang him. Why is he still alive?

South Indians and Dressing

I'm a South Indian and am not exactly proud of my dressing sense along with that of most of my fellow South Indians, men and women alike.

Dressing sense is a very subjective topic and most of what I say here can be countered on the grounds that fashion is not formulaic and need not be bound to convention and rules.Nevertheless, I have observed quite a few quirks in our dressing patterns.

I have noticed that our forefathers have devoted utmost care to their dressing and have always appeared with picture perfect dresses and postures in those old jaded black and white pictures. Unfortunately, our generation seems to be confused by their habitual affinity to traditional wear and new found attraction in western wear.

Here I list a few things I have found to be queer in our dressing senses.

- Men wearing trunks and seated cross legged on a high platform takes the cake.

- Men wearing coolers inside a building

- Men sneakers with western formal attire

- Men wearing sandals with formal attire

- Men wearing sneakers with ethnic attire!

- Men wearing tie with checked shirts

- Women wearing western clothes with traditional indian Gold Jewellery !

- Women wearing western clothes and a Bindi (This is subjective..)

- Women wearing western clothes and a flower donning their tresses

- Women wearing high heels and a saree with the high heels showing !!

- Women wearing platform flats with a saree!!!

- Women wearing a Salwar-kurta on top of a denim trousers!

I'm not a fashion judge nor an expert on the subject. These are purely things I have observed and found to be distasteful to my senses and not everyone may agree and this is not meant to offend anyone, so please do excuse if you find anything offensive.

India needs a credible referendum platform

The MPs in Hyderabad are now clamoring to get Hyderabad to be granted a Union Territory status in the Indian Union. They are gathering political votes to push this idea through urging the central government to accede to the wishes of the people.

This is where it gets sticky. Wishes of the people? how do they make that one up? Did they go to all parts of Hyderabad and ask every one of its citizens if thats what they want?

Obviously not, politicians being politicians are pushing their personal agenda in the name of people's wishes.

If the government wishes to truly take key decisions based on the wishes of Indians, we need to seriously consider building a reusable and foolproof referendum platform that helps governments to quickly gather public opinion on all matters of the state.

Now, having said that, I must admit that building a referendum platform in a mostly illiterate country like India is nothing short of impossible, fraught with challenges on making it fool proof and accessible to all citizenry of this vast country and most importantly to make it cheap!

I have come to believe that the best way this can be implemented with least margin of error is by taking a combination of votes from the general population and the political bosses of this country.

For instance

lets simply consider the people of India and the bosses to be a part of any decision making board that is seeking the referendum with a 49:51 split with government being the 51% stakeholder.

75% vote is required to pass a judgement failing which the government pushes for prime minister's veto card.

How will the people of India vote? Send an SMS to 8989 + password + with a YES or NO!

or something like that. I know this is not the best or fool proof way of executing things. But this should work. We can ensure that all voters register first by providing their IDs such as Passport Number or PAN number or EPF number or other such numbers and a telephone.

This will ensure we can tie-in the telephone number with the voter and provide the citizen with a password.

The central db will register PAN#+Tel#+IMEI# as the unique citizen referendum account. This will even allow same cell phone to be used for multiple individuals should the cell phone be shared.

This is not only cheap, but can reach even the remotest of villages since cell phones have become the most pervasive of technologies since sliced bread!

This system is not without its flaws, it can be secured with little effort by the telecom companies but will provide and stringent measures would have to be taken to prevent any SMS frauds and other such activities by fraudsters.

But, imagine the power that will be bestowed with the citizens of this country should we build such a platform!

The whole nation would become truly self governed! and Bharathi's dream would have been fulfilled

"Ellorum innaattu mannar..." everyone is king in this holy land!

Interpreter of Maladies

Is a novel by a Pulitzer winner author of Indian origin by name Jhumpa Lahiri, did i get that spelling right?.. hope so.
I have been wanting to read her book for quite some years and managed to do so over the weekend and I must say I'm impressed.
Hers is unlike any of the other books I have read for they are nine short stories with not much of a story in them and yet I like them.
There are nine stories that place its protagonists either in India or in Boston, US. The stories are about people, their characters their pains and pleasures, their mould, their outlook, their deepest desires, their flawed outlook and their rather delicate and intricate relations with one other .

The characters are very realistic and layered with such unique features you almost tend to believe that they are real life persons living their life quietly someplace. So much so that you start believing that this book is just a compilation of lifted portions from real life diaries of many individuals.

The book swings from moody, dark and up lifting lives of different characters. Each reader has their favourite and mine are the last two stories. The one of Bibi Haldar and the one of the third continent.
I will not delve into the plots or the lack of it, but suffice it to say that dexterity with which Jhumpa spins her layers around the characters gives them life in manner I have never seen before. You must be Indian and should have a little bit of been away experience to appreciate her work of art. Yes this is a work of art that needs to appreciated and not a cup of ice cream that can be enjoyed with gay abandon. It requires careful look and study to appreciate the texture of this book.
While I love this book, I cannot read such moody books all the time. Its good to sanitize one's self with such lovely prose every now and then.

Plight of women

I came across a wonderful blog written by a lady that goes by the name heartcrossings highlighting the plight of women in India. Mind you this is not about domestic abuse . This is about social abuse women endure in this part of the world.

Needless to say there were loud voices of men who said many things and soon it became an all out debate which am sure is not going anywhere.

However, that set me thinking. It is a known fact that women in India are being abused in public transport system and are being ogled at by countless men of all ages in all places outside their home, inappropriate comments and untoward moves by men in power on subordinates and the list goes on and on.

My solitary question is , why do women have to put up with this systemic abuse quietly?

I'm sure there will be a dozen ladies who would jump at me and scream what would you know, you are a man.

Yes, I agree i cannot possibly even imagine to the smallest levels the kind of mental agony a woman goes through when she is physically or even verbally molested.

What I cannot understand and what am sure ladies will give a thousand reasons for is that why must ladies put up with this.

Why cannot they fight back and slap the guy who abuses them? Why must women be cowed down?

Without sounding overtly dramatic, I wonder, if there was to be a quiet forum of ladies who form an online portal that recruits women who formulate a guideline on how different forms of abuse can be effectively responded to in such a systemic manner.

For instance take a picture of the abuser and distribute it in the local circles so that people know when they see one. Just the picture with something like the skull mark so people know this guy is an el-cheapo?

too childish? But what is the way this scourge can be rooted out from this country?

The interpreter of maladies

I recently brought this book by Jhumpa Lahiri, misses and father in law called it first and took the first reading opportunities. They were quite turned off by the book. The book is meandering about with no plot they said.
I started reading it yesterday night and I have just finished the first story. I must say that the narrative is intriguing.
The first story had no plot, no beginning, no ending. Its just a glimpse at the life of a couple at one of the difficult junctures of their life and how each reacts to it.
Jhumpa seems to relish detailing human emotions. You can almost feel the script playing out in front of you, characters coming alive and enacting the scenes in front of you. Thats what makes a successful book doesn't it?
The book is a piece of art, it has to be appreciated for its beauty. Its not an ice cream treat that tastes the way you expect it to.

Two states - the story of my marriage

Chetan Bhagat's new book is a hoot to read. Story-wise its a plot thats been done to death everywhere from movies to serials since the days of DDLJ. Guy falls in love with a girl, parents don't agree, children ensure they win over the parents and finally all ends well.

However, what makes the book an interesting read are the characters, the classic conservative Tamil Brahmin family with its flaws to the core and the stereotyped boisterous Punjabi family and their beliefs make up all the fun in the book.

'... on the wall was a picture of her family... .they were all standing so stiff and sober that one could almost hear the national anthem playing in the background..' chetan writes.

Chetan's natural wit and humour more than makes for a lackluster storyline invariably evoking quite a few laughs along the way.

Its a pure masala and don't expect a literary genius from Chetan. However Chetan has kept the script tight and ensured that its fun as long as it lasts.

Chetan's leading ladies are always liberal thinking even if the plot were to place the characters in the remotest village of India. Even the characterization is all too predictable for he has repeated this in all his books and should look to vary his leading ladies a bit.

Being a masala writer, one cannot fault him for his tendency to throw logic to the winds and inserting cinematic miralces in his books!

Otherwise this book is a good change for readers and 95 bucks a copy makes it one of the cheapest on the book shelf. It is even cheaper than some monthly magazines!

Go and get your copy