A young rebellion

Nandagopal Rajan

“No reservation, yes scholarships,” screams a bumper sticker on a gleaming new sedan parked in a posh South Delhi colony. The message this innocuous looking piece of on-road graffiti signifies is significant: The Great Indian Youth has finally arrived at the scene of political activism. Their days of vicarious agitation and activism seem over. The indicators were there for all to see; often so obvious that they were overlooked.
Till some time back it was widely believed that you could judge a man’s affiliations by the books he read – the 1984s and War and Peaces were a great giveaway. But we Indians have of late been too busy to read. For the X+ generation, the pressure valve comes neatly wrapped in celluloid.
A couple of years back, south India had two major blockbusters – 4 The People and Boys – both with the obvious message that youth need to change things for themselves. Well nothing new here if you have seen great Hindi formulae films of the 70s. But the message this time was more direct, planting a bug in those impressionable young minds. Up north, Rang De Basanti too said the same things at a time when Anniyan (Aparichit in Hindi) was making 16-year-old stand up and take notice in the villages of Tamil Nadu.
There was rebellion in the air, but no one smelled it. When the spark came in the form of the OBC reservation hoopla, the tinder was ready to be stoked. Soon even the “this-is-not-my-headache’ packs of students across the country were marching on the streets, sweating it out on footpaths and trying their hand at making the most devious looking Arjun Singh caricatures, all in their fight for the Right to Equality. Many of them still might not understand the necessities or intricacies of caste politics, but they sure do understand that they can’t lie back and wait for the wheel of time to set things right.
Half a century of collective frustration seems to be finally finding its voice in a generation that has not learnt to wait, or to forgo. From Coke to PCs and mobile phones they have always got what they wanted. Their attitudes are different; their agitations might be stomped down, but not their resolve. We better not confine the similarities to Bhagat Singh and Azad to silver-screen scripts. Remember history teaches more about the future than the past. Look back, have we seen all this before?

My Oscar

Oscar
Originally uploaded by kamikazengp.

This little devil has eaten up half the other occupants in my aquarium. He goes ravenous when he sees food leaving nothing for the others...

Cautionary tale

Came across this article last week. Parts of it I completely agree with.

Cautionary tale
By Ayaz Amir

IT takes a good two hours in the morning going through a stack of Pakistani newspapers. It takes about half an hour to go through the leading English dailies that you get in Delhi. I have had to read them — newspaper-reading being a habit that members of the tribe carry with their luggage — these past three or four days (invited to Delhi for one of those seminars...what else?...in which worthy subjects are discussed) — and I can say with confidence that I don't know what's happening in the rest of the world.
You read them and you get to know more than you probably would want to about happenings in the film or fashion industry. But if you want to know a bit about events in the rest of the world you would have to seek some other fountain of knowledge.
You can't blame television for being chatty and entertainment-driven because that's how television sells. But you would expect newspapers to be slightly different. No such luck with Indian papers which, driven by the great forces of the market, have been dumbed down to the point where they are indistinguishable from any other consumer product. Small wonder if they are marketed in the same way and as aggressively as, say, a brand of washing powder or the latest cell phone from Nokia or Samsung.

There's no point in singling any newspaper out. By and large, they all look like tabloids out of Bollywood, devoted primarily not to anything as gross or insulting as national or international issues but to some form of entertainment. After the information revolution and in the age of globalization we were all supposed to be more `empowered'. Is such dumbing down the new road to empowerment?

In Pakistan we are supposed to be overly obsessed with politics. Newspapers are full of political reporting. Columns and articles often sound as if they are one long wail about the national condition. Indeed, we have turned moaning and the pursuit of cynicism into national art forms.

Sounds morbid, doesn't it? Yet comparing it to the Bollywoodization of the Indian media, the conscious pursuit of blandness and mindless entertainment even by such standard-bearers of the Indian press as the Times of India and the Hindustan Times, you wonder which is the more insidious, such over-the-top passion as to be found in Pakistan or the complete loss of passion, at least as mirrored in the press, you see in India?
You have to admit, it's a neat arrangement. The masses are entertained — constant entertainment or a form of it the new opiate of the masses, much more effective than religion in many respects — while the governing class and the great captains of commerce and industry have things their own way at the top.
This principle the later Caesars observed to great effect in Rome where, when the empire started falling on hard times, they saw to it that the Roman rabble and indeed even the more responsible citizens were kept occupied and entertained by never-ending festivals and gladiatorial contests, so that no one thought too hard about the intrigues and power games being played behind palace walls.
Do the mass of American citizens think too hard about what is happening in their country or what their country is doing to the rest of the world? That George Bush and the cabal around him — a more dangerous set of characters than the world has known for some time — could drag their country into a war on the basis of the most transparent lies doesn't say much for the collective intelligence and awareness of the American people or indeed of their chosen representatives in Congress.
The same Roman principle is at work here, the masses stuffed to overflowing on a diet of consumerism and entertainment while the leaders of government go about their business undisturbed. If questions are now being asked about the Iraq war it's not primarily because of a rush of any new-found awareness but because the seriousness of the Iraqi resistance is more than anyone in Washington had bargained for, and because the lies of the Bush administration are finally catching up with it.
I hope I am not stretching the point when I say much the same dynamic can be seen in India where the media has managed to do two things very successfully: (1) brushed some very serious national problems under the carpet, to the point where there is not much national or international awareness about them; and (2) celebrated a story of Indian progress which partly is very real but which also relies heavily on fiction.
Entire regions of India — UP, Bihar, to name only two states — are in the grip of serious lawlessness and there is not much that anyone has been able to do about it. But sitting in Delhi or reading the Indian press you won't get this impression. Only when something out-of-the- ordinary happens, a high profile killing, for instance — although in India's wild east even this is no longer surprising — does it figure in the headlines, otherwise not.
There is a full-fledged insurgency in the northeast — Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur, etc — but you won't get to know much about it if your sole source of information is the Indian press.
More serious than these two problems is something potentially more dangerous. From the Nepal border in the north right down to Andhra Pradesh in the south, a wide swathe of territory almost cutting through this huge country is in the effective control not of any government, central or state, but the Naxalite movement. This is a mind-boggling circumstance, about 160 districts of the country — the total number of districts in Pakistan being 105 — outside governmental control. But again the Naxalite movement doesn't figure much in Indian discourse.
True, India's stability or integrity is not under threat. India's very size is the biggest shock absorber of all, its capacity to absorb problems of this nature or magnitude commensurate with its bulk. Still, to insist, or convey the impression, that nothing troubles the Indian heartland is to close one's eyes to reality. As already stated, the Indian media performs this pigeon act very successfully.

India is coming of age as an economic power. It is also flexing its muscles as a major military power. We all know the story and the statistics. Indeed, talking to an educated Indian who wears his patriotism on his sleeve (there being no shortage of this kind because being relatively new to high-power status, Indians tend to be touchy about different aspects of their nationhood) one stands in danger of getting an earful of these statistics.
But it is also a fact that the benefits of growth are not evenly spread, roughly 30 per cent of the Indian population enjoying the fruits of progress while 70 per cent is still trapped in different versions of poverty.
While the rich-poor divide is true of most societies, the great success of the Indian media lies in obscuring this distinction. Watching Indian TV or reading Indian papers one could be forgiven for believing that the entire Indian population, one billion strong, is living the high life. This feat the media has achieved by trivializing national discourse. The biggest temple of all in India is dedicated to none of the older gods in the Indian pantheon but to the new god of entertainment.
The cautionary tale is for us as we move forward on the road to democracy (a journey which would be made easier infinitely if Pakistan's ruling general, fourth in a line of patriarchs the country could have done without, is persuaded to shed his fears and his uniform). If we can get democracy without lowering the standard of national discourse or without the pursuit of trivia, that would be a goal worth striving for.

Meditate

Meditate
Originally uploaded by kamikazengp.

This tourist has found the best place to meditate in McLeodganj. This small hill town is popular among foreigners who want to seek spiritual solace in Tibetan Buddhism. But it interesting that there are hardly any Indian's there to seek spiritual solace. Most, like me, were there for a couple of days, ogling at what the other were doing all around them. We atleast experimented with the food, going on a culinary tour of the world.

You will live in hell

I can't help but curse... how can someone think of destruction in this scale? Which ideolog can justify such carnage? Which state can have peace watered by the bloods of hundreds of innocents.
What happened in Delhi and has been happening in many other parts of the world over the past few years -- the illogical massacre of people who had no ideologies, no demands and no ill will against anyone -- can only explained as a love for death and destruction... no religion or stream of thought can sanction this carnage...
Are these people so blind to the destruction -- both physical and mental caused by them? I beleive I'm a hardened journalist as far as news goes, but I could help but cry seeing a baby dead on the streets of Saorjini Nagar... what did he/she do to anyone in the world? What about guys... don't you see all this... you might have your own reasons and justifications.... but can ths leave you any better that those whom you consider as your enemies....
I'm helpless, like the millions of others out there left to suffer for the what a few people have started unleasing on humanity.... but i can curse that who ever did this will not escape with a punishment as simple as death... you will live in hell....
Amen

The lion in winter

The lion in winter
Originally uploaded by kamikazengp.