Indian Marxists guilty of murder

Tapasi Mallick's killers(rapists?) are convicted. Want to see how much this news will be covered by our media. I never had any hope of proper investigation or justice in this case when i learned about it before. And our great media network never reported any progress either(even though they were hyperactive in reporting about whether tata's will move out or stay in singur).

66th rank

Read the news. Key findings here.

  Our media has better news items to run on their front page, so you might have missed this. TOI wanted to talk about companies going cheap on diwali gifts this year. I searched IE to find a mention with no luck. Funny bit was the mention in cnn-ibn. They reported the news in the context of nano project moving to gujarat.



 

  
 

UN hand-washing day

  Millions mark UN hand-washing day and i suddenly thought it would be about rwandan genocide.

Food crisis because indians and chinese are getting food to eat

According to condolezza rice the more important reasons of food crisis that should be investigated is the improvement in the diets of indians and chinese(really, or is it that more indians and chinese get to eat these days) . A less important factor would be USA and many other countries using food crops to create biofuel. More people getting food to eat is a good thing(and who would have thought we will have to defend such a statement). What needs to be stopped is the new universal policy of promoting conversion of food into biofuels and planting fuel worthy plants like jatropha in arable lands which produced food grains otherwise.

From this news article. Also read about food vs fuel on wikipedia.

Seen in all its grim realities, old Tibet confirms the view I expressed in an earlier book, namely that culture is anything but neutral. Culture can operate as a legitimating cover for a host of grave injustices, benefiting a privileged portion of society at great cost to the rest. In theocratic feudal Tibet, ruling interests manipulated the traditional culture to fortify their own wealth and power. The theocracy equated rebellious thought and action with satanic influence. It propagated the general presumption of landlord superiority and peasant unworthiness. The rich were represented as deserving their good life, and the lowly poor as deserving their mean existence, all codified in teachings about the karmic residue of virtue and vice accumulated from past lives, presented as part of God’s will.
- from the essay about Tibet by Michael Parenti. Go read.

fleeting moment

the cheers gang up on the dreamy ears
dreams race to the escape the eminent dawn
i race to get a hold on her
for the glint is in her eyes
and shes moving away at human pace
my feet are stuck to the earth

the glint shines like a silver dagger
which could cut my heart and let love in
bring light to the alley way ahead
which was pitch dark otherwise
the feet were moving then with no unease

i saw the look in her eyes
there was love but with no pain
there was recognition but no anger
lust with no covers, happiness
i wish i could move my feet, and walk with her

A courageous face

Read the article. While this young girl was tortured in public view many adults were busy filming the scene in their cameras, instead of doing something to save her.

Read more about union carbides compensation

What union carbides compensation is worth.

Dead man is always good

I started by reading this interesting headline
The Judge who got union carbide pay up was respected internationally.
WTF is that, i have never heard the word justice used in any of the articles speaking about the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. And now the justice who presided over the main case against Union Carbide is called the Just Justice. Just because he is dead? Read this article by IE.
A man who holds the distinction of being the youngest person to be appointed as a judge, will also be remembered for his landmark ruling in on one of the worst ‘manmade’ disasters — the Bhopal gas tragedy. As the CJI, he headed the bench that directed the US multinational Union Carbide to enter a settlement with the Indian Government, underlining that interest and welfare of lakhs of people affected by the gas leakage was paramount.
Although Justice Pathak in February 1989 refrained from issuing any directions for launching criminal proceedings against top officials of the US firm responsible for the tragedy, he did his bit in offering relief and rehabilitation to the victims by expeditiously settling the case. It was his landmark ruling wherein the Union Carbide was asked to pay $470 million as a full and final settlement to the Indian Government for payment to the victims.
Now that is some reporting(and i read a few more obituaries all describing this judgement as a success). This settlement(the landmark judgement as per IE) was considered a treason by the victims and if i may say the general indian conscience then, as the damages agreed in the settlement was 15% for the original damage claim($750 million as to $3 billion as per this article) and it gave Union Carbide full immunity from criminal proceedings. It was an out of court settlement, it let the company pay just a fraction of the damages they caused and gave them immunity from prosecution for one of the most deadly industrial crimes that was ever committed. And there were very clear evidence that the tragedy was a result of systematic negligence from the company's side.
I heard about this judge for the first time when my history teacher, Stephen Sir mentioned this judgement in our 10th standard class. I remember him, emotionally charged, explaining how this judge has betrayed the victims of the Gas Tragedy and his country by siding up with Union Carbide. He went on to tell us that he later on applied for post in international court of justice and when he asked the support from indian government for this posting, another international agency(i forgot the name) adviced the government to not support him based on his controversial verdict on Bhopal Gas Tragedy. I don't know whether indian government supported him, but he did become a judge in International Court Of Justice.
This judge relinquished his post as a CJI(Chief Justice Of India) soon after delivering this judgement(without completing his tenure) to leave the country and take up the post at International Court Of Justice. To me all these are just indications as to what happened in that case.

drunk

I am drunk on mild fever, laughing uncontrollably reading up this blog. Laughing does't always mean you are happy, mind is in a bit of pain for a friend.

giggles

Receptionist to young hot couple : What were you guys doing between 2Am and 4Am today.
Couple(giggling): We were wrestling.
Receptionist : The person next door, he didn't quite like that noise you were making(giggle), can you wrestle at some other time please.
Couple : Giggles
Receptionist : That must have been quite a long wrestle(giggles).

And I felt so happy for the couple, and was surprised that I was not even a bit envious.

Doris Lessing Gets Nobel, Yeah

A year back, i exclaimed to my friend, Orhan Pamuk won Nobel.
Today its more emotional, Doris Lessing won the next. I am going back home to read "The Good Terrorist" again. That one book was enough for me to become the biggest fan of hers.
Am so happy.

when life kills death preserves

So i was saying i was lonely. Was alone in this place and i had to study. Enjoying it at times but not always and afraid of impending failure. There were people around me who were not alone and enjoying this more than me. I didn't envy them. I just tried to steal a bit of happiness from their moods and kept hiding when they were about to find out.

I took long walks in between. At the end of the two days i looked back and saw this dark figure always with me. It was like a zombie. It had a stony expression on its face. It always walked at a regular pace and was always looking ahead. Its been with me for so long but i never saw him so clearly.

lets not make doctors out of rich idiots

I am sitting in a cafe having my evening tea with my friends, watching the pretty girls passing by the window and all of a sudden there is an alarm in the atmosphere. A bunch of people dashed across the view pushing a wheel chair with an unconscious girl lying with her head slumped in it. Next to the cafe there is this small health center to which they are obviously heading.

Isn't it miraculous work that a doctor does? This girl who is looking totally healthy, who cannot explain to him anything is brought to him and he has to diagnose the problem that's hurting her, may be immediately or after a bunch of tests. Many doctors have the skills to diagnose complex diseases or problems of their patients, which are not obvious from the symptoms.

My thoughts are going to one place. The way medical education works in my country. I find it hard to digest that a lot of opportunities to study medicine are granted to students who has money rather than the students who has any aptitude or the brains to do it. I am pretty sure that a person needs to be a bit intelligent to be a doctor and the whole possibility of many idiots becoming doctors just because they have wealthy parents creeps me out.

dark day

You feel the dark emotions oozing from your heart. The urge to sin is at the breaking point. I know i have the blockers for this. But look whats happening, they are conveniently blocked. Blockers blocked, is it funny. And may be its not that bad if they were gone for ever, no, just for some time until the bloody emotions take over and you sin. After that they are back in place. I was sitting next to an angel, feeling her aura. My heart cried for the people i am sinning against in silence. The aura of the angel, i thought it will purify me. How wrong am i, and how false are those tears.
I sinned. The blood of the victims were not warm, but the sight warmed me for a short amount of time.

salaam bombay

I was watching Salaam Bombay and there is this scene where Rekha, the lead female charactor, is walking down a long crowded street. Camera moves back and we see Rekha as part of the crowd, and we are also shown a guy with a transistor radio listening to a cricket match. I suddenly remembered the time when a friend of mine has told me about this scene. Rekha is in a lot of pain in that scene as she is asked by the warden of the childrens prison to let go of her child who is imprisoned there. She suggests that Rekha should let her girl be in the prison rather than around her, as she's a prostitute living in the red light area. Or she should think of giving away her to an orphanage. My friend has told me that the scene shows, a mother in deepest pain of being asked to stay away from her kid with nobody to console her while a whole nation listens eagerly to the live commentry of a cricket match. It conveyed it well i think, i dont remember sad music or tears, but it will force you to think.

happy places

Boredom is lurking around. Nothing new about it. But what makes the days special is how many times mind digress into good things. How often you get those subtle triggers which takes you to beautiful places. Most of these places i have never been to, but i stole them from movies or books. Some of those stolen ones are so much accepted that mind argues about its reality for a bit before giving up. Sometimes those triggers are obvious and easy to notice and sometimes they are so tiny and mysterious that you will never see them. The cutest one is the smell trigger. The smell of sharpened pencil which takes me to my nursery days, a particular perfume which takes me to the place where I smelled it before or the smell of a rare food item which takes me to the scenario where I had it last time.

on the way to the asylum

Strange noises, I like to make them. I used to without any stimuli in the past, but nowadays its the morning bath. The cold water touching your skull, and what's inside, a slightly crazy mind. The wayward nerves go beserk, I used to dance before, these days, I shudder. The amount of different thoughts coming in is too much to handle. I imagine what might have gone through the minds of the crazy people who were tied in a sack and submerged in cold water in mental asylums of medieval times, a way of giving shock.

jat men and mallu women

"In Kerala you will not find a single woman who has not passed high school. Now more and more Jats are scouting for a partner here because they feel Kerala women can make the future of their kids safe," This is about the an interesting South - North connection. Apparently guys from Haryana are trying to get brides from kerala. And this is what one guy told as the reason for this long distance alliance. Wow. What a smart plan.
My plea to men of Haryana. Stop killing your women and start educating them. And even if you are not planning to do that stop importing women to normalize the skewed sex ratio in your state.

eugenics in america

Elaine Riddick's form refers to "community reports that she was 'running around' late at night" and her "promisicuity" and her "inability to control herself" constituted grounds for sterilisation.
So she was sterilized when she delivered a baby at the age of 13 without her knowledge.
"I didn't know anything about it until I was 19. I got married and tried to have a child. The doctor told me I had been butchered."
Policies were drawn up in over 30 states in the US to sterilise women, men and children who were considered to be physically, mentally or morally 'defective'.
And they have a nice name for this, eugenics.
State records conservatively estimate that between 1943 and 1963, over 63,000 people were sterilised under the eugenics laws in America.
and
Whilst five states, including North Carolina, have issued apologies for the sterilisations carried out under eugenics laws, the federal government has never acknowledged that any sterilisation abuses have ever taken place.
Remembering a readers digest article about physically and mentally challenged kids being taken away from their homes to live in a facillity, the whole idea being driven by eugenics policy in USA.
All text in green from this bbc article.