A Hectic Week

I'm typing this on the train on the way from Vizag to Hyderabad. I brought the laptop so I could work on it on the train. I slept through half the journey, read a book, played cards etc on the journey and did exatly one hour of work!!!

The last week has been so very hectic!! It started on Saturday afternoon with a class which lasted almost 4hours. Then I sat down to get some work done. At midnigt, Shruti, Shilpa and Shravanthi came down to campus from Mysore. We spent all night chatting and folling around and got about 3 hours of sleep. The next day they left for shopping and I spent the morning doing a little work and joined them at the station in the afternoon from where all of us proceeded to Kuppam. We ate, walked around her campus, went for dinner, came back and chatted and fooled around as usual. We got no sleep at all.

On monday morning, we stared back for Blore. I went straight to campus while the girls went shopping and then Shrav and Shil went back to their campus while Shruti came to mine.I spent all of Monday, including a nightout, and half of Tuesday working on the ACS project, leaving poor Shruti to fend for herself.

Soon after the submission on Tuesday evening, I packed and rushed to the airport to catch my flight to Mumbai. Mom met me at the airport and we stayed at some family friends place. Went to the Consulate the next day, met the visa officer and got my visa done!!! Finally!! Hallelujah!!! Then went to see Mom's bank at Flora Fountain, did a lil bit of shopping at Fashion Street and caught a local back to Andehri where our family frens stay, had lunch and caught a flight back to Bangalore.

Though I didn't get to see much of Mumbai, what lil I did see gave me the impression of it being extremely dirty. I have seen dirtier cities but its just that I did't expect Mumbai to be dirty, thought it would be more like Delhi. The buildings in Mumbai are also so very grimy.And finally the crowds - these were my impressions of Mumbai. And yeah, the airport has become like a bus stand. With runaways getting repaired and the inclement weather, most arriving and departing flights are getting delayed. Result: No place to sit in the airport and you have people settling dow on the floor!!! It gave the impression of a pseud-looking bus stand!

Well,I came back to Blore on Wednesday night, got some work done,attended a class and started on the train to Vizag on Thursday afternoon. I reached on Friday aftenoon, got dressed and went to the Ramya's wedding (her picture). I got back home at 6am on Saturday afternoon and slept till the arrival of Jeshnav. Then we dropped Samee off at the station, went to the beach and went to another wedding that night. Sunday was spent packing stuff from home to take to Belgium, short visits home from friends etc.

I received the good news that my visa has been granted. It is for a period of 3mnths and only for Belgium. I have to get it extended for another 20 days once I reach Brussels and then I will get a white card which will let me travel to other Schengen countries and Switzerland!!

That's about it for now. All the lights are switched off so I better shut down the laptop now. I'll hopefully be able to meet Swetha in Hyderabad tommorrow.

P.S: Yes, I did get to meet Swetha in Hyderbad, though only for 5mins as she could make it just as my train was about to leave. I spent the day in Hyderabad just lazing about - it felt good!!

The World's Greatest Nation

I was talking to a friend of mine and he was justifying the war on Iraq. His logic was that after 9/11, the US needed to prove its strength and get back at its attackers, the Al Qaeda. Sounds fair. Except that there is no Al Qaeda in Iraq. The few militants in Iraq who were being sponsored by Al Qaeda were actually against Saddam's government.

The Baath regime has not committed any act of terrorism against the US since 1993. What the US has done is gone and created terrorism in Iraq. Maybe 8% of militants in Iraq are foreign jihadis. Most of the 25,000 guerillas in pre-war Iraq were Iraqi Sunni Arabs who opposed any form foreign military occupation. By going in to Iraq, the US has successfully converted them into terrorists.

So now they have 'liberated' Iraq. And what happens then? Churches, mosques, hospitals are bombed. Abductions, raids and deaths become a way of life. About 50% of the student and working population in Iraq was female under Saddam's regime. Now women do not venture out without two male armed escorts. Women could dress as they pleased in Iraq, within the restrictions of a conservative society. Now wearing a 'hijab' or headscarf has become a compulsion. A burkha is preferred.A woman whose brother and father were killed by Saddam claimed that conditions were much better before the war.

Iraq used to follow a secular Iraqi law. After the American occupation, a proposal was put forth that Iraq come under Sharia law, which is very biased against wome. Sharia law allows temporary marriages, marriage of minor girls etc. So basically America is helping Iraq become everything they claimed it to be.

The 'spoils' of the war go to America - Haliburton more so than the others. Iraqis are out of work. Do Iraqi companies get to participate in the reconstruction of their own country?No way - they aren't educated enough for that. Of course not -they are barbarians, aren't they? Not civlised like the Americans and Brits at Abu Ghraib.

Over 40 children died in firing between American troops and 'insurgents' in Iraq. It is terrorsim when bombs explode in the US or the UK but it is 'liberation when the same happens in Iraq. A civilian in Iraq is anyone who is not Iraqi.

Many people in the American prisoners are from normal families who were unfairly detained. They are sexually abused, raped, forced to eat pork. The Q'uran is trashed in front of them. It is sickening. I find it difficult to believe that 'humans' could actually do things like this to fellow human beings. But oh wait, for the Americans, Iraqia aren't fellow human beings. And of course, the Americans are scared, they are under a lot of stress and they are putting their lives in great danger to liberate another country...how selfless....and so these little excuses must be understood and pardoned.

'There isn't any other nation in the world that would treat people who were determined to kill Americans the way we're treating these people' said Cheney. Well, the Germans did give them some close competition.

And just when you think things cant get worse, the Americans go ahead and elect Iraq. Well, maybe it was too mcuh to expect of that nation to not elect him.And they deserve him after all. The only thing that enrages me about his reelection is that Iraq doe snot deserve Bush. The hundreds of children killed for committing the crime of being born in Iraq, they dont deserve Bush.

The next time any of you speak up in support of Bush, stop for a moment and think how you would feel if you were in Iraq. Living without electricity, gasoline or water, listening to explosions around you everday, worrying about missing relatives and friends, worried that your house will be raided one day, worried that some female member in your family could be raped any day, being a prisoner in your own home. How would you feel if a loved on stepped out of the house one day, neevr to return, blown up in one of the many explosions rocking the country? What did they do to have to live like that?

After crippling a nation with more than a decade of sanctions, the US goes and cuts off its limbs. We watch. We all call America 'The land of opportunitites'. Its the country where dreams turn to reality. Its a country where the life of its citizens is so precious that for 3000 Americans killed in Iraq, over 100,000 of the locals are killed. But of course, didn't you know that an American life is much more valuable than that of a person of any other nationality?

Yes I know, no one said it was a fair world.

Summers

When people ask me how my summers have been I inevitably reply ‘My summer project was awful but my summer was awesome’. And then I subject my victim to an hour long monologue on what exactly went wrong with my summer project. Well, I was working for the Training & Development team of my summers company and this team was called the Learning team. And my project was on ‘How to create value for Learning’!! As is obvious, there was nothing much I could do about such a project.

And my guide and manager was the head of the India Learning Team. He was a bigshot and a busy man so it was difficult for him to find time for me. And I myself did not make my requirements clear to him and did not seek him out aggressively. So the fault was both ways and the end result was that I went about the project in a very careless manner, not going to office for days, not doing much, my guide not bothered – there was absolutely no learning in it.

Well, I would have liked to do some work during my summer internship but the fact that I didnt have to go to office for everyday from 9 to 5 meant I could do so much more and thats what made my summers so much fun. I must however add that the company I did my summers in was really great and would be a good place to work in.

Well, so what else did I do in those 2 months? I ate out every single day. And tried to go to as many restaurants as possible. So I’m now a kind of expert on Bangalore eateries. I landed up at some amazing places and at some totally forgettable places. While we mostly looked at the right side of the menu when choosing a restaurant, we did try out a couple of different and interesting places too. We went to midnight buffets, weekend brunch buffest, midnight dinner at Empire, terrace restaurants for dinner, a tiny place where we got exotic south indian food...hmm,lots of amazing places.

Then books of course. Though I did not read too many books, I got to read an interesting selection. The best of the lot is William Dalrymple’s ‘White Mughals’ which I loved and have dedicated an entire post to. Then there was Frank McCourts ‘Angela’s Ashes’ which I did not care too much for. Anita Desai’s ‘Baumgartner’s Bombay’ which was also just okay. Khushwant Singh’s ‘Truth, Love and a little Malice’ – I didn’t like the book at all – it would have been fun if he was malicious but he is just very petty, is critical of everyone except himself and his writing is nothing exceptional. Then Jumpa Lahiri’s ‘Interpreter of Maladies’ which was a very interesting and exceptionally well written set of stories. Sudha Murthy’s ‘Wise and Other Wise’ – a book of short stories- simple, warm and thought provoking. I read a couple of old William stories,Asterix, Calvin and Hobbes and P G Wodehouse for a few laughs- my family finds this very frustrating because I laugh out when I am reading something funny and when it is one of these books, I become quite hysterical and end up falling off the bed laughing or getting a stomach ache coz I laughed too much and cant take it anymore!!! Well, I am right now reading a book called ‘The Ugly American’ and it was all in all a good summer for reading (though not comparable at all to the number of books I used to read during summer vacations in school and college but then the kind of books I read then were also like that) and it got me to use the IIMB library for the first time after coming here.

Saw lots of movies too...some in PVR, some in my room - Hindi, Telugu and English. And went to a couple of plays at Ranga Shankara – I got to see a really good play called ‘A Heap of Broken Images’ directed by Girish Karnad and a brilliant protagonist. Then a stand up comedy called ‘Mr.Funny Man’ which was decent and a really long and painful play called ‘Madness.

Did a lot of other stuff. I went to the International Dance Festival conducted by Alliance Francaise. Got lost quite often in the city. Travelled to Coorg, Kushal Nagar (which has a very impressive Buddhist monastery) and Mysore in a day. My sister was here for two weeks and that just added up to the fun factor. We would watch Scrubs/Friends/Joey/That 70’s Show and play cards till 6am and then sleep till late afternoon after which it was time to get up and go out. Ramya was here for a weekend so I took her out shopping. And then did a lot of shopping of my own for myself and my family with my money.

It was a summer of pure joy and happiness. Even the weather seemed to do all it could to make it perfect – it was sunny mostly, and only occasionally hot and it would rain ever so often. I’m always going to cherish this summer because with it comes the awareness that this might just be the last long vacation I am going to have in quite a while. And sine that is a thought I do not want to dwell upon, I shall sign off here.

Rape in India

In a recent rape case, the judge decided to postpone his verdict by a day so that the victim could consider the marriage proposal. Fortunately, the victim in question, a nurse at a Delhi hospital, had the courage to say no and insist on the punishment of the rapist. How does marriage to the rapist make the rape a right? And what would the judge do if the victim was already married? It is incredibly absurd. Agreed, in India, the woman who is raped is ostracised by society, and the object of much sexual harrasment at work, and yes, she definitely has very minimal chances of ever getting married. But is marriage to a beast a better fate? The rapist would probably be the kind who would abuse her - just makes things better for her, doesnt it?

The way rape cases are treated in India - the very injustice of it rankles so much. In one rape case a policeman said that sometimes the victim 'deserved' to be raped because she dressed improperly!!!!! Firstly, in a large number of rapes in the country, the victims are poor - they can hardly be expected to wear fashionable skimpy clothes. And while I am all for women taking necessary precautions, how can anyone shift the blame on the behaviour of the victim? Whatever be the 'character' of the victim, it is no excuse for the blame to be shifted to her. Nothing, absolutely nothing can make a rape acceptable.

Take the case of the infamous Suryanelli sex scandal. A 16 year old girl was kidnapped and detained for 40 days during which time more than 30 men raped her!! She claimed that they tied her hands behind her back and loaded her with drugs and alchohol so that she would not be able to resist. She was finally abandoned only when she became too ill to serve their purpose. This case led to wide spread outrage in Kerala leading to the setting up of a special court which convicted 36 of the 42 accused.

You would think that was the end of it. No- an appeal went to the high court which acquitted 35 of the 36 accused!The judges looked at the girls past behaviours - wasting away Rs.450 her father had given her for hostel fees, then pawning her ornaments - implied that she was not a 'normal innocent' child! And then the judges felt that the girl had not tried to escape, that she had not seemed to resist the men enough - all these meant that she was a willing partner to sex - and so acquitted the men. What is wrong with those two judges?? Havent they heard what the girl said about how she was tortured? Cant they understand something so basic that just because she as unable to resist does not mean that she was a willing partner to it?

And it is cases like this which make the women hesitate to even report a rape. A confidence that because they are women born in a society such as ours, justice would be denied. Because in our society, a woman who has been raped is never the victim - she has always brought it on herself. Because it is the victim who is abused, it is the victim who is ostracised and who has to live in shame and fear for the rest of her life for having brought out her problem in public - while the rapist in all probability is living free, even free of guilt.

I do not understand nor would even attempt to understand how any man could abuse another person like that. What kind of mental perversity could lead to such behaviour is beyond my contemplation. But I have tried and failed to understand why we let such beasts go scot free. It is because of the shockingly low conviction rate in rape cases that men still go on commiting such heinous crimes...with the confidence that they can get away with it.

A 80 year olf woman was raped in Delhi last month. A 16 year old girl was raped by her school principal, another minor in Mumbai was raped by a policeman. And the story which always makes me shudder - the rape of a mentally retarded girl by a man on a Mumbai train. Not that one rape is worse/better than another. But what kind of animal would behave like this? How could one stoop to such brutality?

India desperately needs to tighten it rape laws. A string of rape convictions might atleast serve as a deterrent. And there is an increasing need for NGO's or other support groups - the victims need help, financial, healthcare, emotional support etc - and there is hardly any of it available to them. Organisations which can provide such support to the victims are necessary for them to be able to get their life back to normalcy and find acceptance in society.

History...

Havent been well for the past ten days...a bad cold, sore throat and now cough...so apart from the fact that I havent had icecream in 10 days, I havent done much except sleep and eat. I finished this amazing book I was reading...William Dalrymple's'White Mughals'. A fantastic book- while the crux of the story is how the British Resident in Hyderabad falls in love with the grandaughter of an important Hyderabadi noble and the consequences of his actions-the book deals with the much wider issue of theEnglish coming to India and adapting to the culture of India.

There are some fascinating stories...of an Englishman in Delhi who had 13 wives, another Englishman who hadbecome so Indianised that he was referred to as'Hindoo Stuart', another Englishman who wrote that the sari was the sexiest garb in the world and strongly recommended that women even in the western world wear it if they were to stand the competition given by Indian women...little tidbits about life in India in the 18th century. The amalgamation of Indian and English culture makes for gripping reading.

The book also gives us sudden and small insights into the intrigue surrounding deccani politics of that time...mostly between the Hyderabad of the Nizams, the Maratha Confedaracy centred at Pune and Tipu's Mysore.And the French-British struggle for control over the deccan through these. This is the only book I everread on the period after the Golden Era of the Mughal period (which effectively ended with the death ofAurangzeb) and before the First War of Independence in1857.

And it is interesting to observe life during those times. While the British were certainly working on gaining control over India, they hadnt yet introduced any of the harsher measures either in civillian life or in the military which was later the cause of much antagonism. The denizens of the country hardly seemed to look upon the British as their rulers- in fact, they considered the Indian princes to be their rulers and the British played the part of protector by signing deals with the princes where the British would provide an army to the prince in exchange for part of the revenues etc. By having complete control over the internal and external protection of these Indian states,the British certainly had control over the country itself but this control wasindirect.

A lot of Englishmen madeban effort to learn some Indian language or the other-they studied Indian scholarly texts and were quiteimpressed by them - a good example in case would beWarren Hastings. While the atmosphere was certainly one of suspicion and plotting, at that stage the British was still not considered the common enemy and this allowed a great degree of mingling between the English and the Indians- resulting not only in a whole league ofAnglo-Indians but also a refreshing culture ofadjustments and quaint mixed traditions.

While reading the book, I kept stopping at crucial points to indulge myself in 'what if...' conjectures.Imagine this - Arthur Wellesley would not have become the Duke of Wellington if his older brother had decided to send him into the diplomatic service instead of letting him continue in the military. More interesting - the French and not the British would have ruled India if the Napolean had not been defeated(it is now known that he was in active communication with Tipu about throwing the British out of India).And if that had been the case, how would it have affected our freedom struggle, our date of Independence and how would French rule have changed the face of India as we know it now...

Im now quite determined to read up more on history. I have for quite a while been looking for a book that gives a British perspective of the Indian struggle for independence. Since we studied the Indian struggle for Independence only in the 10th Std. & that too under the relatively less censured ICSE syllabus, our history textbook did not leave us with the impression that all Indians were heroes and all Englishmen were eveil. Sure, it did convey that message but certainly not that everything was black and white - the textbook admitted that there was scope for grey too. So it let me think about the other perspective - in English history textbooks, are Indians depicted as ungrateful wrethches or uncivilised brabarians who were civilised by the British only to against them. It would be interesting to see how the British explain actions which must now seem quite harsh and unjust to them to their future generations

But we see history always plays out this way - when one country takes advantage of another for its ownbenefit, irrespective of whatever harm it might cause to that country, it will always find ways to justify its actions. It happened then with England and India,its happening now with the US and Iraq or the US andAfghanistan. And these are only 3 examples but history is replete with many such incidents. And then when I look back, I dont see India ever doing that. Maybe itis too weak for it. But I think it is actually becauseIndians are generally laidback, easygoing people who are to a large extent content with what they have....or the other perspective, too lazy to want to achieve more.Whatever be the reason, I guess it is still one thing we can be proud of.

Oh well.....I only wanted to say I read a brilliantbook - the author managed to seemingly effortlessly merge history and literature to create a masterpiece.