Find the bra-burning gal in the Taliban

Some papers have hinted the Pune blasts might be the handiwork of some extreme-right wing Hindu organisations. I don’t know how much of it is true. It could be the old game of ‘when you can’t convince, then confuse’.

We all know the Pune police is grappling in the dark about who could have planted the bomb that ripped through German Bakery. Infact the joke was that a few days after the blasts, its police commissioner was addressing students citywide to take part in the fight against terror under a programme very ambitiously called ‘Operation Mrityunjay’.

I really don’t know what the students are supposed to do here. I’m sure most of the guys the commissioner addressed would love the opportunity of playing ‘terror checkers to female suicide bombers’. Imagine the fun when you have the right to ask women to disrobe to check whether they have strapped anything sinister beneath their clothes. Besides that I have no clue how students can fight against terror.
Because do what you may, I think spotting a terrorist as part of a citywide programme like ‘Operation Mrityunjay’ is a concept as laughable as going out to Afghanistan to find a bra-burning female libber in the Taliban.
A terrorist as far as my finite knowledge tells me is a brainwashed man who willingly builds up prejudices against oneself and one’s religious beliefs by imagining them acutely.
A reverse of the same kind of imagination that motivational authors like Wallace Wattle, Napolean Hill, Clement Stone or Rhona Bryne want us to do. Imagine it and it shall be true kind of concept.
I say this because I see perfectly sane people suddenly talking like chicken-hearted jehadis- the kind who’s piss if they ever saw a bomb, let alone plant one- despite growing up in a perfectly secular surroundings comprising happy-go-lucky friends who cared more for the fun that playing together brought than praying together ever brought.

The kinds who’d without blinking an eyelid say it is because they are from a particular community that they didn’t get a good enough raise or they missed out on a promotion. The kinds who study in secular ICSE/CBSE/SSC schools and then suddenly reach office in long beards, shaved moustaches, and pajamas five inches above their ankles. Or ask for leave from office on days when there is some problem with the alignment of Rahu and Ketu and when the moon goes into that horrible position in the sky our learned saints termed as ‘amaavas’.

The kind of man who willingly turns into a hate-filled weirdo despite nestling amidst the best and positive of circumstances is a jehadi and you really don’t expect students- awash with thoughts of books, porn, facebook, orkut, dating, films- to nab them after one slumber-inducing lecture from the Pune police commissioner or any other man in khakhi for that matter.

I think the Pune police would do better by bringing to life their informer network and increasing the rewards for them the same way as the sponsors of terror do to get the hate-filled weirdo in their fold.

Coming back to whether some Hindu organisation did it, if it is true, I sincerely hope the cops catch hold of them, slit their veins all over their body and leave them to dry out in the Pune sun. If there is any life left in them still, then probably running a road roller over them shouldn’t be a bad idea at all.

Religion has never taught us to live and no bastard of any hue has the right to kill another this miserably to keep religion alive.

so very emasculate sozzled republic

Former IPS officer Prakash Singh, who once headed Uttar Pradesh police and also the Border Security Force. In an interview to the Asian Age on Sunday used a very telling word for the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW). The word he used was ‘emasculated’.
Prakash Singh knows what he is talking about or atleast we should believe him because unlike scores of police officers who after joining the IPS become as docile as the bahu of some chauvinistic thakur in interior Bihar, Prakash Singh took the government all the way to the Supreme Court over some technical issues afflicting the police.

The men responsible for this emasculation, Singh says, is a whole range of Prime Ministers starting with that absolute joker IK Gujral. Now Gujral is a bit like that Pakistani minister-turned-human rights campaigner Ansar Burney. He gets more positive reportage in Indian papers than probably any other Pakistani politician but does it change anything about him except that he is a first rate joker.

IK Gujral is the kind who completely forgets Chanakya’s sane counsel that respect for nations/states/ kings come when the benevolence they exhibit or want to is backed by ruthlessness unmatched to set things right.

As a journalist, I think the RAW is an organisation that gets a lot of its teeth because of the things written about it rather than the things they do on the field. Even officers in the police force will talk about the RAW as if they are some vicious cousin of the Mossad. Then we hear that a host of Indian terrorists are ensconced in safe havens in nations within our reach and years pass by even before as much as a stone is thrown in the direction of their well-fortified residences. Picture that with what the Mossad did to one of the scum of the Hezbollah in Dubai?

I think at the end of the day we are just a sorry nation in the mould of some Central African republics or Bangladesh closer home. And we seriously need to get less worked up after every blast because there isn’t much we can do about them.

After every blast, my colleagues from the newspaper world throw up the same names, the cops, unofficially agree, and then we move on with our stories till some idiot sitting somewhere rips open our heart once again with a bit of RDX, a bit of nails, and lot of guts and hate.

I think when Prakash Singh said the RAW has been emasculated, he probably meant the country.

rants of an ungrateful bastard

I think there must be some rule which says that people cannot keep status lines which are open to interpretation. It must be very clear ones like –I hate you so and so- or –I want to kill my boss for denying me a hike- and not something like –oh so now you are happy- or –will bite head off.

Now ever since some bastards ripped open the German Bakery at Pune, I am feeling sick and miserable. I felt the same after 26/11 and the previous bomb blasts that shook our country. When I read stories about some budding footballer losing both his legs or siblings dying clinging to each other, I boil with rage. And since people like me cannot do much apart from boiling with rage, I boil with rage.

A natural progression of this anger that wells up in my heart is that I get agitated at small things and on small mistakes of colleagues and myself. A very dangerous progression still is that I start imagining slights and insults in harmless words or status taglines when there might be none.

Now a day after the blasts, a colleague had her tagline as ‘some people are showing their true colours’. Now my mind started imagining and then convincing myself that the tagline was meant for me. Why? Well you see I was offered this job when I had none and my competence in all matters journalistic was deeply suspect.

So like a dutiful and loyal employee, I went about trying to build up a team comprising people far more talented and successful than me. I used to take most of their transgressions as if nothing much happened because I was deeply convinced that I was here because of the team that works with me. So it was all fun, frolic, sugar and honey.

So now when things start getting a bit hot under the collar for the team as a whole and me in particular, I am supposed to keep quiet, take all the stress and go about my day. And have a drink or smoke at the end of the day to bring the stress levels back to normalcy.

So I with certainty took it that the ‘some people who had started showing their true colours’ was yours truly. What it meant was that I had got a little too big for my boots and my inherent nature of deceit and cunningness had come to the fore. That I had become the ungrateful bastard- you see my boss had picked me up from obscurity and given me a job- I always was, is what the tagline meant.

The only problem with all this is that it completely negates the little bit of work that I have put in here as an ordinary worker.
But then the thing about loyalty is if you want a loyal dog that never snaps, get a pug, never a Doberman.

There is another chap who has a problem with some of the taglines I keep. Like all unsuccessful people who have crossed 30, my taglines are bitter and general rants. After every blast in any part of the country, they become a bit- ok make that a lot- insensitive towards the Muslims.

Now the problem with a large majority of Muslims- like this chap- is that they can wear their designer jeans half way down their underwear and sport glares that would be half my salary and be ‘modern’ in all other ways – like saying having ten girlfriends at the same time- but when it comes to religion, my boy they are still in the Arabia of camel caravans.

So he shot me a few chats about how I am doing nothing to foster harmony among different religions. My boy, when I have done nothing to foster harmony between my dreams, aspirations and my wallet, where is the bloody question of my doing any harmony shit about something as stupid as religion.

I know all this isn’t going to win me too many friends but then someone intelligent told me long time ago that when it is time to give it, it is time to give it.

So till such time as a law comes in about taglines and their clarity, it is best to ignore this harmless trite that goes by the name ‘chat status’.

You don’t like my chat taglines, you block me out. Because life at 24 hours a day is sometimes too little for slow movers like me to make them count. So please do not giver me any additional baggage to load, when forget my seat, I’m not even sure of my train.

the chengez of our times

I would really like to know who exactly advises Bal Thackeray on political matters these days. Just so that I can help my adopted state with some peace and tranquility by wringing the necks of those so-called advisors. Because as much as I might have a problem with the man’s politics, you cannot deny the fact that inside that head ticks a very good and capable brain. And all the buffoonery we saw in the name of one nonsensical film – that too directed by Karan Johar- cannot be a product of Bal Thackeray’s brains.

Having known Maharashtrians quite intimately for a host of reasons including having been in a relationship with one for them for several years, I know them as remarkably intelligent people. The kind who dearly want to up their stations in life with the help of white-collared jobs.

Precisely the reason why despite Kolkata, Chennai and several other cities being by the sea, the elements chose Mumbai- Bombay then- as the magnet of riches in India. A lot of that credit has to go to Mumbaikars and their essentially Marathi ethos. Just look at the mess the bhadralok and their love for culture has got Kolkata into.

In such a place, building up a political party, a thought process and a following as fanatical as the Sainik is nothing short of the kind of genius that we have read of in conquerors in history. I have seen the reverence the man evokes even among politicians who have left the Sena fold and have hopped onto other parties. It is always Balasaheb, never Bal Thackeray. One of them still addresses the old man as ‘saheb’ though he was rather unceremoniously booted out of the party some years ago.

The legend is that Bal Thackeray revolted because he was given a lesser raise than several of his ‘outsider’ colleagues. I don’t know how true this legend is but if someone can make a movement out of something this miniscule and convert the theatre of Maharashtra politics into ‘him’ and the ‘rest’, then I would believe the man has the same capabilities and qualities as another fabled hero of yore- for more information please access Chengez Khan on Wikipedia. From fatherless in a patriarchal Mongol society with an impoverished mother and brothers to feed to the man who shook up history of the times in such a magnificent way that the Arab custodians of the fastest-growing religion of the time had to mutilate history down to the last grave to deny the great Khan his due as a conqueror-statesman-prophet.

But as My Name is Khan plays in the theatres- I’m being bombarded by news that it is houseful- we all know the Sena romance is in its last reels. And probably like Sholay, it is a film that was brilliant in every reel save the last. Now don’t tell me you didn’t want Thakur or Dharmendra to kill Gabbar.

But as Sholay was just too good for a bad ending to kill its place in our minds forever, the Sena too would evoke the same nostalgia among millions of Marathis long after it is gone.

Mighty prince, your bucephalus waits

More than two thousand years ago, King Philips of Macedonia was having trouble with a horse that had made up its mind that just no ordinary donkey would ride him. Horsemen from far and wide climbed and fell off the horse in almost one action. Till a young prince moved in. Philips was a bit apprehensive to throw his beloved son to the lions- in this case Bucephalus the horse- but beneath that soft face, the prince hid a resolve stronger than the surrounding mountains.
Five minutes later, the prince astride, the horse appeared to be as calm as when he slept standing. He stood looking into the horizon, wanting to gallop into it with his new master holding the reins. An arrogant smile escaped King Philips’ lips and as he looked at the court jesters- somewhat like our Congress Working Committee- one of them came forward with a verse that earned him a few gold coins. The verse was something to the effect of the earth being too small for the prince standing proud and tall. And how the prince and his stead would want more when they had overrun it all.
The jester-poet wasn’t wrong. The stead and the prince overran almost half the known world at the time and came knocking at the doors of the biggest civilisation at the time- India- and only went back when his soldiers said that thus far and no further.

A couple of days ago that legend of the taming of the horse was played out in India’s richest city. Of course this horse likes to call itself a tiger.
Our prince, under the able guidance of its Angel Mother who plays fairy to the meek and benevolent ruler of India, arrived with a glint in his eye and belief in his heart that the horse/tiger that refused to be tamed did so because Bucephalus had not met its Alexander as yet.

The belligerent tiger/horse told his minions that they were all to appear on both sides of the road with black flags to greet the invading prince. The minions told their master that the city would look like a sea of black flags.
The prince landed, took a ride in the sweaty-rust-smelling chariots meant for the common man, touched the commoners, smiled his dimpled smile, stole hearts, longed for the sight of some black flags but failed to see any.

The horse/tiger next day told the world that his people had failed him and henceforth he would not ask his minions to carry out any idiotic command that came to his mind first thing in the day.
As for the prince, like the Greek one of yore, he gave out a warning loud and clear to every kingdom on the way that come 2014, standing in front of the storm he would create would be similar to standing in front of the Rajdhani at top speed.

The prince’s main rival- a Gujarati bachelor ruling his province with an iron fist for a decade now- looks a good bet but the problem is that the Muslim populace of the kingdom would rebel, gang up against the bachelor and hand the prince a sweeping win. In the 2009 elections, the Muslims have shown that they are the most intelligent community when it comes to voting. In Uttar Pradesh they gave the Samajwadi party a resounding slap on the face when it became clear that the Congress was the only one that could checkmate the BJP. In Kerala they have been voting for Gujarati Banatwala for ages now.
In Guwahati they elected an Uttar Pradesh-born Muslim who made his millions in Mumbai.
The sweep of Wahabism across the world means slowly but surely the difference between a Tamil Muslim and a Kashmiri Muslim is diminishing by the day.

So 2014 would be the year of the prince. The tigers can make space between their legs for their tails. His cubs will shiver and hide under the bed when the prince visits. When they want to gnaw on meat, the cubs can take on lesser mortals like Azmi or Bachchan and the benevolent prince- dimpled smile, calm demeanour ---would allow it. Like Alexander did when mighty Pururava- Porus- told him how he wanted to be treated like a king.

Rejoice. Because Alexander is going to ride once again. Bucephalus/ India can now look into the horizon and like that jester-poet said, say-

O heavens, for this time you have erred:
Why did you make this world so small?
Our prince, standing proud and tall:
Will want more when he has overrun it all:

forsake religion, make heaven on earth

A devoutly atheist relative of mine once told me that for heaven to be built on earth, the first thing that we need to forsake is religion. It gives nothing except a false sense of piousness to the follower and acute disturbance to the one who isn’t following your herd on that particular day.
Today is a holy day for the Shias. Probably a remembrance day of somebody’s martyrdom or some such thing that I have not bothered to find out. But what I did find out is that when these black-clad gangs –for want of any better word- get into trains to get to the place where the collective sigh of remembrance will be let out, they are a pain in the neck.
For youngsters it is a day of going out and behaving like the goons many want to be but cannot because becoming a goon requires large parts of the heart to be free of the fear of law. Most of us overstuff our hearts with fear anyway.
So taking the energy derived from the strength of numbers, these gangs will block the gangways and doors of trains, spit profusely into the wind unmindful of whether the blob of spit falls smack on the face of some passenger hanging perilously on the door simply because there isn’t enough space to go in. Of course once they reach the spot where they will meet several more of their ilk, they will pull down a façade of piousness and sorrow over their faces, mouth time-tested hollow chants and go home.
I think in 1947 we made a promise of building a nation where your religion will be as private and comfortable as your underwear.
But thanks to Nehru and his massive urge to appropriate the nation for his brood, we lost our way. Today we are caste Hindus, Dalits, Shias, Sunnis, Wahabis, Tablighis, Catholics, Protestants, Jains, Biddhists. Any bloody damn denomination but Indians.
One nation, one people can go up the anal openings of all of us if anyone cares enough.
Oh by the way which reminds me, a small sect of Sikhs, who follow the preaching of Sant Ravidass, have announced that they are no longer a sect of Sikhism but a full-fledged religion. They will be called Ravidassis, their symbol would be the ‘Har’ and their chant would be ‘Jai Gurudev’.Fantastic. So now we have started on the path where religions will change as you hop from street to street. We well and truly have begun the process of putting the last log on India’s pyre. Till then enjoy the warmth.

Rahul Azmi zindabad

So finally Rahul baba has said something that brings him down to the level of the Uddhavs and the Raj Thackerays of the world. The cousins were really having a problem sparring all the while with Abu Asim Azmi. Now Azmi might be an MLA but he is not exactly the cream that the upmarket newspapers would want to milk for saleable news. So the wholly empty buffoonery that had come to signify the debates on who owns Mumbai between the Thackeray cousins and Azmi was in serious danger of making it to the bottom heap of media room trash.
The kind of fate that has befallen the blabbering of some of the Republican Party of India leaders in Mumbai. Now how many cared as much as a rat piss when Athavale said that he had been booted out of the Big Boss in favour of Sanjay Nirupam because Nirupam had a more elitist personality?
But Rahul Gandhi is just something else. Even if he does something rank Azmi-ish by trying to give a swarthy north Indian colour to a fighting machine like the National Security Guards, the media really can’t throw the press release into the dust bin.
Now that Rahul has said it, the Thackeray cousins are happy. Over the past two days every branch of Rahul’s hallowed family tree is being shaken down to the roots by the two big-mouthed tiger cubs.
Jawaharlal, Indira, Motilal, Rajiv, Sonia you name it and Rahul has got it.
Of course the debate will never end because it will be impossible to stop migrants from making the journey to dream-infested Mumbai. It will be impossible to stop the caravan out of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. It will be impossible for Biharis and Uttar Pradeshis to fully integrate with the Marathi Mumbaikar. It will be impossible for the Mee Mumbaikar gangs to fully accept the bhaiyya.
But what is very worrying in all this ‘national mouth shooting off competition’ is to see the real mettle of a young man who is arrogant enough to believe that the only job that this wretched nation can give him that is worthy of him is the Prime Minister’s chair.
Rahul is no different from politicians like Amar Singh or Azmi or even the Thackerays. It is just the carefully-illuminated halo- built up meticulously by media and party sycophants who are nothing but royalists in the garb of democrats- that makes Rahul Gandhi different. That halo is slowly giving itself up to a load-shedding of ideas.For India it is a pity. Another one bites the dust.