You don’t suppose the Nobel Committee will award the Ambani brothers the Nobel Peace Prize next year, in case they just decide to kiss and make up. Giving blow-jobs to the brothers on the air-waves/in print will become so much easier then. Not that it is particularly difficult right now. Heck, maybe the ‘Holy Calf’ should be given a Nobel Peace Prize for ‘cuddling’, can you possibly find a more peaceful activity than ‘cuddling’? Not that I can think of, even though I would rather cuddle a naked woman. Talking of naked women, I take this website to show evidence either of Darwin’s theory at work or hormones in our food – (it’s got most Playmates of the Month from 1958-2008, so its quite unsafe for work, but… so is listening to Pearl Jam’s Backspacer at volume - even though it is a kick-ass album).
Does anyone else have my peculiar Wikipedia fascination? Not that I'm fascinated by Wikipedia, but where I can spend hours just randomly surfing Wikipedia finding out bizarre things - yesterday I spent hours reading how whales evolved (and related articles, some having nothing to do with anything in general). Don't ask me why or even how I got there. Maybe the copious amounts of Kingfisher Blue I had drunk while Veeru and Dinesh Kartik were batting had something to do with it. But, despite the fact that I support Delhi - no I am not going to fall prey to parochialism and support KR - methinks they're missing AB deVilliers. But it is always good to get in a few games at Feroze Shah Kotla.
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A couple of answers to the last post, I have no idea where my friends mom is, I don't even know if she is alive. Sure, it won't be that difficult to find out, I'll have reactivate some contacts, maybe even some I would rather not, but it can be done I guess. Dealing with death is never easy, no matter what age you you have to stare it in the face. I guess I had to deal with it so up close and personal when I was young that I lost a bit of my, I won't call it innocence, but, I lost something.
Both those times I never attended the funerals, the first one I attended was a few weeks after I finished my Class XII boards when another school friend died in Uphaar fire. I won't forget the chaos and the horror of a mass funeral. It isn't as if I had not seen death close up otherwise, as a kid on a drive back from Chittorgarh to Udaipur we saw an accident scene, which let me assure you wasn't pretty. But then again, that wasn't someone close to me. Maybe, all these things helped me acquire that crazy detatched demeanour they say journalists need, call it cynical or whatever, it has to come from experience. Which is why I could pull off assignments like this without getting caught up in the human tragedy of it all, and avoid, for better or for worse, bleeding heart syndrome.
Which is why I cannot become a Naxal apologist like Arundhati Roy. That said, seeing how the sugar lobby has bled Maharashtra dry and the immense poverty in some parts of the state. Weirdly enough, in my 16-odd months as a reporter in Bombay I saw more of interior Maharashtra than I should have - and that is where my antipathy towards Indica's comes from. Yes, there is a dichotomy in India (two India's, maybe not), the rich, even some of the apologists have never seen how poor the dispossed actually are and what the problems really are.
But the fact remains, violence doesn't solve anything - as the Communists have shown in West Bengal - the oppressed can become the oppresser within a generation. And one worse than the previous oppressor ever was. There are solutions to these problems - it is not as if the Naxals are 'anti-development' as some insane NGO's would have you believe. I've seen how ham-handed rehabilitation programs for the dispossed have been in Orissa. Heck, a majority of the Naxal's are nothing more than sexually-depraved extortion racketeers! Some more equal than others.
There are no attempts at trust building by successive governments in the state and centre. As well-meaning the 'Holy Calf' really is, and I won't be a cynic and say that he is a hipocritical bastard whose brother-in-law spends tens of thousands on drinks for him at Delhi's better bars. Because that leads to the rhetorical question - how many 'cuddles' could a bottle of Chivas buy?
OK, I take this post as a nother example of my tremendous ability of 'flow of consciousness' writing with no real aim in sight. But it is so much more fun that structured pieces about fat and balding farts! And then again, it is just the start of 'Swag' week. Yay!
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3 comments:
Was about the mention my own wiki travails before I read the 2nd half..
Hell, I'll talk about them anyway. Spent hours reading on the Nazis and how a particular Nazi officer responsible for major allied damages in the Battle of Bulge by inducting English speaking-American Uniform wearing german soldiers. He was sprung by the OSS from post war prison to help in anti-soviet activities. Another article about a Nazi regiment consisting entirely of Indian Soldiers in Europe. The Tiger regt or something.
You are not cynical B enough. If you were truly cynical, you would enjoy the macabre spectacle of violence in the countryside. Yes, the oppressed become oppressor soon, but it's only when we allow both the sides to battle it out, we can see the dark side of human nature emerge in all its fury and glory. Its a jungle out there..so why should we take sides and support one side and condemn the other? These Naxalites are no worse than the panchayat chiefs who order honor killing or the parents of eloping couples who are barbaric enough to kill their own kids, are they?
Arundhati Roy is foolish to glorify the poor, the marginalized and those who take arms on their behalf, but the Indian middle/upper class is worse - they are hypocrites who refuse to look deep into the darkness of their own hearts while condemning the actions of those who threaten the cozy world they have built for themselves.
We use this phrase - violence doesn't solve anything - only when violence is directed towards something we believe in or something we care about. The typical rediff idiot who keeps screaming about the plight of Kashmiri pundits on every opportunity justifies violence against Iraqis or Afghans and wouldn't shed a tear if every Muslim was packed off to a gas chamber. Liberals and human rights activists ignore the brutality and the barbarism the poor are capable of against their own people. If they do, they will become too cynical to do anything..lol
Arundhati Roy is a fool but a much-needed fool because if she and her types were not here to show us the real state of affairs, we would become blind to the horrifying brutality, the ugliness and the darkness of the world we live in preferring to believe in the elaborate lies we build for ourselves. We hate her, because she exposes us nakednes, makes us uncomfortable by asking hard questions that we don't have answers for.. If people like Roy were to stop irritating us, we would become like the Britishers who believed in their own lies about the virtues of imperialism (and denied Gandhi a Nobel because he was a terrorist-sympathizer!).. A lot of what Winston Churchill said about Indians has come true..the oppressed have become the new oppressed and have bled the country dry stashing away trillions in swiss banks. But don't we still celebrate the independence of the country or cynically brush it off saying one group of looters have replaced another?
Now, I'm not comparing maoists with Indian freedom-fighters..I've no sympathy for Naxalites and as you say, perhaps they are nothing more than sexually-depraved extortion racketeers. But my heart doesn't bleed for the cops who regularly beat the crap out of those unfortunate enough to be caught in their clutches, my heart doesn't bleed for the panchayat chiefs who kill their kids to uphold their their savage traditions and beliefs, my heart doesn't bleed for the lower-castes/dalits who despite facing the brunt of casteism, have divided themselves into sub-castes.. Let these savages slug it out amongst themselves! I would much rather see the marginalized rogues rise up and fight the ruling rogues rather than continue to see one set of rogues dominating other set of rogues for generations. In the former case, at least someone gets its one-uppence..
TBC..
Indian educated class is hypocritical to its core. Suddenly their hearts have started bleeding for a slain cop in some deep corner of the country. Do they give a fuck about over 7 lac undertrials who continue to rot in prisons because the Indian state hasn't found a way to speed up judicial process? Do their hearts bleed for the millions of victims of third-degree torture in Indian prisons? They believe in Gandhi on 2nd October and feel pride in seeing Google adopt Gandhi logo, but from 3rd october, they are back to their former vengeful selves and would wish to see the might of Indian military wipe out from earth not just sexually-depraved extortionists but also every activist who dares takes up the cause of the marginalized. These hypocrites see no difference between a hard-core naxalite and Dr Binayak Sen..and would even hang a Noam Chomsky if they learn that he supported the release of Dr Sen.
I feel like laughing aload everytime someone sanctimionously says 'Violence is not the answer'..I see violence everywhere..deep in the hearts of every human..even the ones who believe they are too noble to kill a fly..These noble souls would faint at the sight of blood oozing from their pinky fingers, but would without a tinge of guilt gulp down their throats flesh delivered on their plates through violence. Everyone loves violence, the only differences are the targets of our violence.
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