Oh, how I miss them! Those fluffy, wispy, grey tufts in the sky that make my world look so much more beautiful for a quarter of the year. This morning we have blue skies above, the unrelenting sun bleaching everything out. I keep checking the south, which is where the rain-bearing clouds roll in from in these parts. But it's just a blue haze today, holding out very little hope for an overcast day.
Just yesterday I read my father's blog complaining about a week of rain in Delhi and realised how much living away from the city of my birth has changed me. While I was in Delhi, I too enjoyed the rain for a couple of days but began to grow restless and frustrated if it lingered for any longer than that. I loved the rain in short, sharp spells. But not when an incessant pitter-patter stretched for days.
Living in Mumbai and Thane for half a decade has changed how I feel about the monsoon. The buildup to the season of rain is absolutely spectacular. I can't quite put it in words. After months of sticky, icky weather, you can't describe the ecstasy on spotting the first bank of monsoon clouds rolling in, the first burst of cool breeze caressing your face. Everyone starts to smile. It's infectious. This buildup sometimes lasts for over a week, the anticipation growing every second. People keep peering out, extending their hands out of apartment windows to check if the heavens have finally decided to be charitable.
We've been extremely lucky in living throughout in apartments with beautiful views of hills and water bodies. We could see Powai Lake from all the rooms in our home in Mumbai. In Thane we face the hills of a wildlife sanctuary and the river Ulhas. And these views are the most breathtaking in the monsoon. On lazy weekends my husband and I at times spend hours sitting in the balcony, sipping coffee and gazing at the scenery. And we keep wondering how we'll adjust back to a life with no views to speak of when we move back to Delhi!
Of course, there's a downside to the monsoon. You wage a constant battle against mould and mildew in every nook and cranny of your home. This year I realised to my horror that textured lampshades with grooves in the fabric are mould magnets! Drying clothes is a nightmare. It can take up to three days for clothes to dry, longer for thicker fabric like denim or linen. But this monsoon has been much better for me because my husband bought me a 100% clothes drier that makes life so much simpler. So no more musty smell in clothes and no rooms taken over by drying laundry.
There are also several waves of viral and gastric infections in this season. If there are children in the house, you'll all fall ill at least two or three times each monsoon. There are also mounds of rotting refuse here and there, slush on the streets, clogged drains on days when the rain is heavier than usual. Yet I love the season.
A good monsoon here lasts about three months. You adjust to a quality of daylight that is gentle on the eyes. So when the clouds disappear, it takes quite a while to get used to the glare again. Something I am struggling to do today, which is why I am missing the clouds. The monsoon arrived late this year and it hasn't rained as much as it should in a good season. So I haven't had my fill quite yet.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
The silent agents of change
Sitting ensconced in our upper middle class worlds, we all like to believe that we are in some little way making a difference in the world. Somewhere out there, things are better because of a little charitable deed we did. That could well be so. But what we don't recognise is that the real, silent and potent agents of social reform inhabit our everyday lives but remain invisible to most of us sahibs and memsahibs
Take the time to get to know the team of women who clean and cook for you and you’ll be amazed. While we were living in Mumbai a few years ago, we had three ladies coming in to help us. One used to clean, one used to cook and a third babysat my younger son, who was then less than a year old. Their life stories, on the surface, were just the same as those of millions of other women occupying the less glamorous part of the urban Indian landscape. But dig a little deeper and you’d be blown away by their individual initiative, ambition and fortitude.
All of these women had three children each, coincidentally two girls and a boy in each case. The cook was a widow and the other two had been deserted by their husbands soon after the third child was born. None of these women had studied beyond primary school. And all of them had been married off while they were girls, in their early or middle teen years.
Now these ladies led very hard lives. The cook and cleaner worked three or four part-time jobs in middle class homes to make ends meet. Money was always short. Yet all of them – and this is what impressed me most – had promised themselves that they would educate their daughters and not marry them off before the age of 18. This wasn’t because of advice from social activists or from fear of being punished for breaking the anti- child marriage law. This came from within.
People like you and I cannot understand just how much it takes for such women to stick to this resolve. First, money is a constant challenge. Even public schools for the poor cost some money. Second, there is no supportive spouse to share the responsibility. Then there is always pressure from peers less evolved in their thinking to pull the kids out of school and put them to work. And when it comes to the daughters, the constant advice from the peers is to get them married and pass the “burden” on to another family. Yet none of these three ladies caved. The cook, who was older and had grown children, even made sure that her younger daughter got the vocational training she wanted in order to get a good job.
We’ve now moved to another city and the women who keep our current home running are more fortunate as they are in good marriages. But they too were child brides. Yet they don’t wish the same fate for their daughters, all of whom are in schools.
Through my life I have encountered scores of such examples of admirable courage among the invisible members of home after home. The majority of maids had alcoholic and abusive husbands. The women kept the home fires burning. The cleaning lady in my mother’s home in Delhi has single-handedly put five children through school. Her husband, a gifted embroiderer, wasted his earnings, talent and life on drink. Yet all their kids completed school, thanks entirely to the mother. One of the sons now runs an Internet cafe and computer repair store.
Think about it. This is a gigantic leap, accomplished in a single generation. I can’t think of a parallel in the lives of us, more advantaged, people. We are born into means, giving us automatic access to the education we want to make something of ourselves. We get all the right opportunities, know all the right people. Some of us have probably done a little bit better than our parents managed to at our age, but nothing life-altering.
And then look closely at the lives I have written about. Don’t ever look down on these women. Don’t ever be condescending towards them. They’ve moved mountains while we’ve probably just piled our sand dunes a little bit higher.
Take the time to get to know the team of women who clean and cook for you and you’ll be amazed. While we were living in Mumbai a few years ago, we had three ladies coming in to help us. One used to clean, one used to cook and a third babysat my younger son, who was then less than a year old. Their life stories, on the surface, were just the same as those of millions of other women occupying the less glamorous part of the urban Indian landscape. But dig a little deeper and you’d be blown away by their individual initiative, ambition and fortitude.
All of these women had three children each, coincidentally two girls and a boy in each case. The cook was a widow and the other two had been deserted by their husbands soon after the third child was born. None of these women had studied beyond primary school. And all of them had been married off while they were girls, in their early or middle teen years.
Now these ladies led very hard lives. The cook and cleaner worked three or four part-time jobs in middle class homes to make ends meet. Money was always short. Yet all of them – and this is what impressed me most – had promised themselves that they would educate their daughters and not marry them off before the age of 18. This wasn’t because of advice from social activists or from fear of being punished for breaking the anti- child marriage law. This came from within.
People like you and I cannot understand just how much it takes for such women to stick to this resolve. First, money is a constant challenge. Even public schools for the poor cost some money. Second, there is no supportive spouse to share the responsibility. Then there is always pressure from peers less evolved in their thinking to pull the kids out of school and put them to work. And when it comes to the daughters, the constant advice from the peers is to get them married and pass the “burden” on to another family. Yet none of these three ladies caved. The cook, who was older and had grown children, even made sure that her younger daughter got the vocational training she wanted in order to get a good job.
We’ve now moved to another city and the women who keep our current home running are more fortunate as they are in good marriages. But they too were child brides. Yet they don’t wish the same fate for their daughters, all of whom are in schools.
Through my life I have encountered scores of such examples of admirable courage among the invisible members of home after home. The majority of maids had alcoholic and abusive husbands. The women kept the home fires burning. The cleaning lady in my mother’s home in Delhi has single-handedly put five children through school. Her husband, a gifted embroiderer, wasted his earnings, talent and life on drink. Yet all their kids completed school, thanks entirely to the mother. One of the sons now runs an Internet cafe and computer repair store.
Think about it. This is a gigantic leap, accomplished in a single generation. I can’t think of a parallel in the lives of us, more advantaged, people. We are born into means, giving us automatic access to the education we want to make something of ourselves. We get all the right opportunities, know all the right people. Some of us have probably done a little bit better than our parents managed to at our age, but nothing life-altering.
And then look closely at the lives I have written about. Don’t ever look down on these women. Don’t ever be condescending towards them. They’ve moved mountains while we’ve probably just piled our sand dunes a little bit higher.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Splitting hairs over partition, again
Rake up the dead, especially controversial figures from history, and they'll bite you in the behind. India's former foreign minister Jaswant Singh certainly learnt that lesson yesterday. His book on Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the father of the Pakistani nation, got him unceremoniously kicked out of the nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Calling Jinnah secular proved Singh's undoing even though his political boss, Lal Krishna Advani, had survived a similar mistake some years ago. While Singh would surely have expected - perhaps even hoped for - some protest and controversy over his just released book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, I don't think he had anticipated expulsion from the BJP. Controversy can be very profitable for authors because suddenly thousands of people who would otherwise not have considered reading the book in question will rush out to buy a copy to figure out what all the fuss is about. But this proved to be more than a storm in a teacup.
Now I've been a student of history at university, and even a cursory glance through books on the Indian independence movement make it amply clear that Jinnah was a suave politician from a previleged background who was deeply secular in his thinking. It was merely his personal ambition that made him back the British idea of breaking India up on religious lines. Jinnah was, clearly, an opportunist. But, for a member of an aggressively Hindu political party to go and write that in a book is fraught with danger.
I personally believe that splitting hairs over partition is an exercise in futility. It creates bitterness, dredging up emotions that would better have been left buried. It keeps us from moving forward. There aren't many left of the generation that lived through the horrific bloodbath that accompanied the biggest mass human migration in history in 1947. We, a generation born into freedom, should now keep our sights focused on the future, ending decades of mutual hate and suspicion between India and Pakistan.
I can't quite understand why Jaswant Singh had to write about Jinnah in the first place. What was the compulsion? There are plenty of Indian historical figures, even controversial ones, that he could easily have chosen as subjects. So why Pakistan's Quaid-e-Azam?
For the BJP, a party that has always questioned the Indian subcontinent's break-up into Hindu-majority India and Mulsim-dominated Pakistan, it is impossible to stay quiet when one of its own is perceived to be glorifying the man they hold responsible for partition. To add insult to injury, Singh is reported to have written that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Pandit Jawharlal Nehru were perhaps as culpable. That is what pushed the BJP leadership over the edge. While they might let the dig at Nehru slide because he was the patriarch of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that dominates the rival Congress party, any assault on Patel's reputation is unacceptable. Iron Man Patel, independent India's first minister of the interior who orchestrated the formation of this gigantic union of states, is one of the BJP's prime historic idols. In fact its current leader, Advani, aspires to the Iron Man epithet.
Jaswant Singh is now going hoarse telling whoever cares to listen that he is shocked at the expulsion from a party he has served for three decades. But I really cannot understand why he set out on a literary project that would surely sour - if not sever - relations with the leadership of the BJP. Even he cannot be fool enough to have not anticipated that.
This will certainly be right up there among some the darkest hours of Jaswant Singh's long career, first in the army and then in politics. The darkest hour by far was when he, as India's external affairs minister, personally escorted three Islamic terrorists to Kandahar in Afghanistan in December 1999. The terrorists were freed in exchange for hostages on board the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC 814. It'll be interesting to see if Jaswant Singh can now manage to salvage his political career.
Calling Jinnah secular proved Singh's undoing even though his political boss, Lal Krishna Advani, had survived a similar mistake some years ago. While Singh would surely have expected - perhaps even hoped for - some protest and controversy over his just released book Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, I don't think he had anticipated expulsion from the BJP. Controversy can be very profitable for authors because suddenly thousands of people who would otherwise not have considered reading the book in question will rush out to buy a copy to figure out what all the fuss is about. But this proved to be more than a storm in a teacup.
Now I've been a student of history at university, and even a cursory glance through books on the Indian independence movement make it amply clear that Jinnah was a suave politician from a previleged background who was deeply secular in his thinking. It was merely his personal ambition that made him back the British idea of breaking India up on religious lines. Jinnah was, clearly, an opportunist. But, for a member of an aggressively Hindu political party to go and write that in a book is fraught with danger.
I personally believe that splitting hairs over partition is an exercise in futility. It creates bitterness, dredging up emotions that would better have been left buried. It keeps us from moving forward. There aren't many left of the generation that lived through the horrific bloodbath that accompanied the biggest mass human migration in history in 1947. We, a generation born into freedom, should now keep our sights focused on the future, ending decades of mutual hate and suspicion between India and Pakistan.
I can't quite understand why Jaswant Singh had to write about Jinnah in the first place. What was the compulsion? There are plenty of Indian historical figures, even controversial ones, that he could easily have chosen as subjects. So why Pakistan's Quaid-e-Azam?
For the BJP, a party that has always questioned the Indian subcontinent's break-up into Hindu-majority India and Mulsim-dominated Pakistan, it is impossible to stay quiet when one of its own is perceived to be glorifying the man they hold responsible for partition. To add insult to injury, Singh is reported to have written that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Pandit Jawharlal Nehru were perhaps as culpable. That is what pushed the BJP leadership over the edge. While they might let the dig at Nehru slide because he was the patriarch of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that dominates the rival Congress party, any assault on Patel's reputation is unacceptable. Iron Man Patel, independent India's first minister of the interior who orchestrated the formation of this gigantic union of states, is one of the BJP's prime historic idols. In fact its current leader, Advani, aspires to the Iron Man epithet.
Jaswant Singh is now going hoarse telling whoever cares to listen that he is shocked at the expulsion from a party he has served for three decades. But I really cannot understand why he set out on a literary project that would surely sour - if not sever - relations with the leadership of the BJP. Even he cannot be fool enough to have not anticipated that.
This will certainly be right up there among some the darkest hours of Jaswant Singh's long career, first in the army and then in politics. The darkest hour by far was when he, as India's external affairs minister, personally escorted three Islamic terrorists to Kandahar in Afghanistan in December 1999. The terrorists were freed in exchange for hostages on board the hijacked Indian Airlines flight IC 814. It'll be interesting to see if Jaswant Singh can now manage to salvage his political career.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Enough about Kasab, please
It isn't news that our news publications seem to be suffering from an escalating lack of imagination and increasingly warped perspective. But the continuing manic obsession with terrorist Mohammed Ajmal Amir Kasab, for all the wrong reasons, is downright ridiculous. I have no quarrel with the media reporting on Kasab's trial relating to the terror attacks in Mumbai on November 26 last year. That is news and people would like to know how things are progressing. But all the rest is completely unnecessary.
Some front pages this morning have reports about the young Pakistani - the only terrorist taken alive after Mumbai's 60-hour nightmare in 2008 - pining for a rakhi! Apparently he felt left out after seeing cops, lawyers and prison guards sporting colourful rakhis (threads that sisters tie on the wrists of their brothers). He asked his lawyer if anyone would do him the honour. The lawyer shared this little tid-bit with the press, which promptly lapped it up. Who needs a PR agency when the Indian press is so willing to oblige?
There's more just from this morning. Apparently Kasab very helpfully offered to sketch the faces of two other terrorists, also wanted for the 2008 attack, whose pictures the Indian police do not have on file. And he handed over childish doodles to the expectant cops. What on earth did they expect?!! Disappointed cops and prison authorities have now dismissed the sketches as "completely useless" and decided not to hand them over to the judge trying Kasab. The report further enlightens us on how the Pakistani was given paper and pencil for the sketches and then watched "extra closely" to ensure he didn't hurt himself with the writing tool.
The Indian Express quotes an unnamed prison official as saying: "Although he is not a sketch artist, we were expecting him to make a serious effort to draw the two faces. However, when he gave us the sketches we did not know what to say. He had drawn doodles like a small child. The drawings do not resemble actual faces by any stretch of the imagination and are completely useless."
I ask again, what the hell did you expect?!! That this young, misguided killer is a closet Van Gogh?
These are just the latest in a series of such absurd reports. We've read before about Kasab getting bored in prison (well, d-uh!) and asking for books to read. According to reports he has been reading books on magic (probably hoping to spirit out of Arthur Road Jail) and the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. We were also informed when he asked for permission to take a stroll outside his solitary confinement cell. And when he requested an Urdu newspaper, toothpaste and a bottle of perfume.
Now I've been in the print news business for quite a while, so I am aware that papers need what are called human-interest stories. But human-interest reports are meant to tug at a reader's heart, stirring compassion and empathy. Why on earth would you want to do that for a man who killed several innocent Indians in cold blood? And, even if you think it necessary for some strange reason, why on the front page?
On the night of November 26, 2008, a group of young men landed on Mumbai's shores after setting sail from Pakistan some days earlier. They had orders to randomly kill as many people as possible and were talked through the barbaric operation by their minders in Pakistan. The final toll of Mumbai's ordeal was 170. Kasab was one of those killers. Please let's remember that and not - even unwittingly - try to humanise this monster.
Some front pages this morning have reports about the young Pakistani - the only terrorist taken alive after Mumbai's 60-hour nightmare in 2008 - pining for a rakhi! Apparently he felt left out after seeing cops, lawyers and prison guards sporting colourful rakhis (threads that sisters tie on the wrists of their brothers). He asked his lawyer if anyone would do him the honour. The lawyer shared this little tid-bit with the press, which promptly lapped it up. Who needs a PR agency when the Indian press is so willing to oblige?
There's more just from this morning. Apparently Kasab very helpfully offered to sketch the faces of two other terrorists, also wanted for the 2008 attack, whose pictures the Indian police do not have on file. And he handed over childish doodles to the expectant cops. What on earth did they expect?!! Disappointed cops and prison authorities have now dismissed the sketches as "completely useless" and decided not to hand them over to the judge trying Kasab. The report further enlightens us on how the Pakistani was given paper and pencil for the sketches and then watched "extra closely" to ensure he didn't hurt himself with the writing tool.
The Indian Express quotes an unnamed prison official as saying: "Although he is not a sketch artist, we were expecting him to make a serious effort to draw the two faces. However, when he gave us the sketches we did not know what to say. He had drawn doodles like a small child. The drawings do not resemble actual faces by any stretch of the imagination and are completely useless."
I ask again, what the hell did you expect?!! That this young, misguided killer is a closet Van Gogh?
These are just the latest in a series of such absurd reports. We've read before about Kasab getting bored in prison (well, d-uh!) and asking for books to read. According to reports he has been reading books on magic (probably hoping to spirit out of Arthur Road Jail) and the autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi. We were also informed when he asked for permission to take a stroll outside his solitary confinement cell. And when he requested an Urdu newspaper, toothpaste and a bottle of perfume.
Now I've been in the print news business for quite a while, so I am aware that papers need what are called human-interest stories. But human-interest reports are meant to tug at a reader's heart, stirring compassion and empathy. Why on earth would you want to do that for a man who killed several innocent Indians in cold blood? And, even if you think it necessary for some strange reason, why on the front page?
On the night of November 26, 2008, a group of young men landed on Mumbai's shores after setting sail from Pakistan some days earlier. They had orders to randomly kill as many people as possible and were talked through the barbaric operation by their minders in Pakistan. The final toll of Mumbai's ordeal was 170. Kasab was one of those killers. Please let's remember that and not - even unwittingly - try to humanise this monster.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Truth be told
So our parliamentarians are outraged yet again. This time it's a stupid television programme that has their jocks in a bunch. Sach ka Saama, the recently launched Indian version of the ridiculous American show Moment of Truth, has our enlightened representatives agonising over the future of Indian culture and morals.
The show basically has people answering a set of 21 questions that progress from the mundane to the increasingly embarrassing and personal in the hope of making some quick cash. In India prize money is Rs. 1 crore (just over 200,000 USD). This is how it works. Aspiring contestants have to submit to a polygraph test where they are asked several questions. When they actually appear on the show, they are asked questions picked from the same set of queries and their answers are tallied against responses in the lie detector test.
I have watched a few episodes of the Moment of Truth and could never understand how people willingly made complete asses of themselves on prime time television and tore their families asunder just to win some money. Questions relating to professional ethics could be very uncomfortable and those relating to fidelity were downright cruel. And yet people queued up to appear on the show! The smug Indian in me dismissively shook the head because it fit in with the popular global perception of Americans.
Truth be told, I was a little shocked to discover a few weeks ago that India was now to have its own version of the show. It shook my belief that to an Indian, family comes first. But then I suppose one has to acknowledge the emergence of a new breed of Indian to whom cash is king. I am also a firm believer in the principle of laissez faire, so I was curious to see how this would pan out. If people don't mind endangering conjugal harmony in the hope of easy money, more power to them.
Not surprisingly, Sach ka Saama has hit a roadblock in its very first week. Members of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Indian parliament) are up in arms over its "obscene content" and the broadcast ministry is reportedly considering throwing the book at Star Plus (a channel desperately trying to shore up ratings after its bouquet of soap operas fell out of popular favour) for apparently violating the content code. What's really stirred the cauldron is a married woman being asked if she has ever considered adultery. She said no, but the polygraph ruled she was lying through her teeth.
Now what's the point of taking the TV station to task? If there are asinine people who voluntarily go on the chopping block to satisfy India's newly acquired insatiable voyueristic appetite, let them go hang. They walked into this with their eyes wide open.
And what's this about Indian culture yet again? Are you saying that no married Indian woman has ever fantasised about having a fling, if not actually gone ahead and had one? Come on people! Why is it that everything is fine as long as it's not discussed in the open? Has this country never witnessed infidelity? And don't try to brand this an urban phenomenon triggered by the degradation of values under the influence of the crass West. You know just as well as I do that this doesn't just happen in big cities. And none of this is new.
So let Sach Ka Saama run its course and die a natural death. Believe me, it'll happen. People will fairly soon tire of watching skeletons tumbling out of closets. Just leave it be, because you'll just appear hypocritical trying to shut it down under the guise of high Indian morality.
The show basically has people answering a set of 21 questions that progress from the mundane to the increasingly embarrassing and personal in the hope of making some quick cash. In India prize money is Rs. 1 crore (just over 200,000 USD). This is how it works. Aspiring contestants have to submit to a polygraph test where they are asked several questions. When they actually appear on the show, they are asked questions picked from the same set of queries and their answers are tallied against responses in the lie detector test.
I have watched a few episodes of the Moment of Truth and could never understand how people willingly made complete asses of themselves on prime time television and tore their families asunder just to win some money. Questions relating to professional ethics could be very uncomfortable and those relating to fidelity were downright cruel. And yet people queued up to appear on the show! The smug Indian in me dismissively shook the head because it fit in with the popular global perception of Americans.
Truth be told, I was a little shocked to discover a few weeks ago that India was now to have its own version of the show. It shook my belief that to an Indian, family comes first. But then I suppose one has to acknowledge the emergence of a new breed of Indian to whom cash is king. I am also a firm believer in the principle of laissez faire, so I was curious to see how this would pan out. If people don't mind endangering conjugal harmony in the hope of easy money, more power to them.
Not surprisingly, Sach ka Saama has hit a roadblock in its very first week. Members of the Rajya Sabha (the upper house of Indian parliament) are up in arms over its "obscene content" and the broadcast ministry is reportedly considering throwing the book at Star Plus (a channel desperately trying to shore up ratings after its bouquet of soap operas fell out of popular favour) for apparently violating the content code. What's really stirred the cauldron is a married woman being asked if she has ever considered adultery. She said no, but the polygraph ruled she was lying through her teeth.
Now what's the point of taking the TV station to task? If there are asinine people who voluntarily go on the chopping block to satisfy India's newly acquired insatiable voyueristic appetite, let them go hang. They walked into this with their eyes wide open.
And what's this about Indian culture yet again? Are you saying that no married Indian woman has ever fantasised about having a fling, if not actually gone ahead and had one? Come on people! Why is it that everything is fine as long as it's not discussed in the open? Has this country never witnessed infidelity? And don't try to brand this an urban phenomenon triggered by the degradation of values under the influence of the crass West. You know just as well as I do that this doesn't just happen in big cities. And none of this is new.
So let Sach Ka Saama run its course and die a natural death. Believe me, it'll happen. People will fairly soon tire of watching skeletons tumbling out of closets. Just leave it be, because you'll just appear hypocritical trying to shut it down under the guise of high Indian morality.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Frisk farce
I find more than a little ridiculous the Indian leadership's collective outrage on former president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam being frisked by employees of an American airline at Delhi airport. What's the fuss about? Isn't he just another world citizen, subject to procedures designed to keep us all safe in the skies? What's more, the man in question didn't seem to find anything offensive in being asked to take his shoes off and being swept with a metal detector.
Explain to me, how is this a slight to out national honour? The reactions have ranged from the melodramatic to downright mischievous. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel has reportedly called the act "absolutely unpardonable". Congress party's Jayanti Natarajan has dubbed it an incident of national humiliation and gone as far as to recommend that Continental Airlines services to India be scrapped till those responsible are punished. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley claims we bend over backwards to pamper our state guests (which I agree with to an extent) while Indian VIPs are subjected to humiliating security measures the world over. The Marxists, of course, have again taken the cake. Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has reportedly suggested that the Indian government investigate whether the former president was frisked because he is a Muslim!
Was Kalam's a singular experience among passengers of the Continental flight from New Delhi to Newark? Highly unlikely. Did Continental staff ask only those passengers with Muslim names to step aside for frisking? They might be able to do that in the United States, but I can't imagine a foreign airline trying to pull such a stunt on Indian soil. Besides, people, Kalam isn't the least bit bothered or offended!
This Indian obsession with wresting special treatment at all costs is just annoying. Actually it's no surprise that these reactions are streaming out of Delhi, a city notorious for its "jaanta nahi mein kaun hoon (don't you know who I am?)" culture. Every has been, is and wannabe in our national capital aspires to VIP treatment.
Kalam WAS our president. He is now an ordinary citizen. He has earned the respect he deserves not just from the nominal office he held but for his scientific work and as a national motivator. If Continental staff were brazenly discourteous to him, I would take strong objection. But a security check isn't disrespect. It's common sense. And former leaders the world over would be well advised to submit to them in order to set a good example.
Surely the Indian leadership can find more worthy causes for outrage and action? How about the agony of millions of farmers whose crops are withering on parched fields across northern India? Or the billions of rupees being wasted on erecting statues of egomaniacal leaders? How about expending some of that misdirected energy on making sure our defence personnel are better looked after as we reminisce as a nation a decade after the Kargil war with Pakistan? Please stop wasting your breath. You're on our payroll and we'd like to see more responsible use of your time for a change.
Explain to me, how is this a slight to out national honour? The reactions have ranged from the melodramatic to downright mischievous. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel has reportedly called the act "absolutely unpardonable". Congress party's Jayanti Natarajan has dubbed it an incident of national humiliation and gone as far as to recommend that Continental Airlines services to India be scrapped till those responsible are punished. Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley claims we bend over backwards to pamper our state guests (which I agree with to an extent) while Indian VIPs are subjected to humiliating security measures the world over. The Marxists, of course, have again taken the cake. Sitaram Yechury of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has reportedly suggested that the Indian government investigate whether the former president was frisked because he is a Muslim!
Was Kalam's a singular experience among passengers of the Continental flight from New Delhi to Newark? Highly unlikely. Did Continental staff ask only those passengers with Muslim names to step aside for frisking? They might be able to do that in the United States, but I can't imagine a foreign airline trying to pull such a stunt on Indian soil. Besides, people, Kalam isn't the least bit bothered or offended!
This Indian obsession with wresting special treatment at all costs is just annoying. Actually it's no surprise that these reactions are streaming out of Delhi, a city notorious for its "jaanta nahi mein kaun hoon (don't you know who I am?)" culture. Every has been, is and wannabe in our national capital aspires to VIP treatment.
Kalam WAS our president. He is now an ordinary citizen. He has earned the respect he deserves not just from the nominal office he held but for his scientific work and as a national motivator. If Continental staff were brazenly discourteous to him, I would take strong objection. But a security check isn't disrespect. It's common sense. And former leaders the world over would be well advised to submit to them in order to set a good example.
Surely the Indian leadership can find more worthy causes for outrage and action? How about the agony of millions of farmers whose crops are withering on parched fields across northern India? Or the billions of rupees being wasted on erecting statues of egomaniacal leaders? How about expending some of that misdirected energy on making sure our defence personnel are better looked after as we reminisce as a nation a decade after the Kargil war with Pakistan? Please stop wasting your breath. You're on our payroll and we'd like to see more responsible use of your time for a change.
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Thanks, Mr. Zardari
Thank you Mr. Asif Ali Zardari. Other than for marrying the charismatic Benazir Bhutto, history will now remember you for admitting at long last that Pakistan has been nurturing terrorists as part of deliberate national strategy. At least Indian historians will. Your nation might now plead with the world to put your remarks of July 7 in the context of the situation in Afghanistan after Soviet withdrawal, but few are buying that line.
The Indian press has, understandably, pounced on those few words you uttered while addressing former civil servants in your country. Your statement was front page news on all Indian dailies on Thursday, July 9. Because finally there is something we can throw back at a world that for decades has been unwilling to openly back us when we say most of the worst terror strikes on Indian soil have had their roots in Pakistan.
Incidentally, and not surprisingly, the Pakistani press has been uncharacteristically silent on the issue.
Was it a gaffe, Mr. Zardari? Or are you actually trying to set things right? Just a few days ago you had reportedly admitted in an interview that militants were, in the past, considered "strategic assets". What's going on? Is someone twisting your arm? Holding a gun to your head? Why these sudden bursts of conscience?
Whatever the reason, we as a nation are thankful. Hope the world will now recognise just how these subversives your nation has bred have left India bleeding. We have reportedly lost 60,000-70,000 lives to militancy since the 1980s. Punjab, Kashmir, the Northeast - wherever discontent surfaces, your "strategic assets" have fuelled the fire and taken an unacceptably heavy toll.
We hope that your public acknowledgement of responsibility as a nation (yes, many of us see it that way) will mark the beginning of the end to this inhuman strategy.
The Indian press has, understandably, pounced on those few words you uttered while addressing former civil servants in your country. Your statement was front page news on all Indian dailies on Thursday, July 9. Because finally there is something we can throw back at a world that for decades has been unwilling to openly back us when we say most of the worst terror strikes on Indian soil have had their roots in Pakistan.
Incidentally, and not surprisingly, the Pakistani press has been uncharacteristically silent on the issue.
Was it a gaffe, Mr. Zardari? Or are you actually trying to set things right? Just a few days ago you had reportedly admitted in an interview that militants were, in the past, considered "strategic assets". What's going on? Is someone twisting your arm? Holding a gun to your head? Why these sudden bursts of conscience?
Whatever the reason, we as a nation are thankful. Hope the world will now recognise just how these subversives your nation has bred have left India bleeding. We have reportedly lost 60,000-70,000 lives to militancy since the 1980s. Punjab, Kashmir, the Northeast - wherever discontent surfaces, your "strategic assets" have fuelled the fire and taken an unacceptably heavy toll.
We hope that your public acknowledgement of responsibility as a nation (yes, many of us see it that way) will mark the beginning of the end to this inhuman strategy.
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