For me this great country is like a pearl necklace with pearls of different sizes, shapes and colour. It is a mystery what  the string is that holds the pearls together. Many forces have tried to break the thread and scatter away all the pearls. The greatest threat for India to exist as country is not from any Portuguese, Dutch, British, Pakistani or Bangladeshi. The greatest threat India ever faced was from Indians.

There was a time when Punjab was one of the powerful kingdoms in India. It was ruled by the one eyed Ranjith Singh. He was known as ‘The Lion’. After his death fight broke out for the throne. His son Dilip Singh was installed when he was only a child. British wisely manipulated the situation. The pseudo rulers invited the British to take over the kingdom to prevent it from falling into the hands of rivals. Dilip Singh was ‘adopted’ by the British throne. He converted to Christianity, lived on pensions allotted by the British. When he was old he tried to take back the kingdom and converted back to Sikhism. But it had become too late. He died as a poor man in some shoddy lodge in Paris.

The last Mughal, Bahadur Shah Zafar, was not suited to be a king. He was a scholar, sufi and writer. Anyway he need not have had the qualities of a ruler because Mughal empire was under East India Company. He had the title and people showed him the respect. But he had no authority to speak of. He continued on good terms with British because they had no trouble from the old man. Marrying young and beautiful girls old enough to be your grand daughter was one of the hobbies among the ruling class. He married the beautiful Zeenat Mahal and she bore him a son. Conceding to her coaxing, persuasion or nagging (call whatever you seem fit) he agreed to make her young son the heir apparent. This pissed off many rightful heirs. (Remember the title ‘ruler’ was just a namesake. They never had enough money and had to depend on British for the money). That is when the Sepoy Mutiny happened. Zeenat feared her son would lose the claim to the throne. She plotted with others and relayed timely information to British. The mutiny was doomed and failed eventually. The irony is even she and her son was exiled along with the king.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah was initially in the Congress. He was a liberal, married a non Muslim, drank and didn’t know much about Islam. He moved over to Muslim League because of his waning influence in the Congress. ML was initially a party for the aristocratic Muslims with no much power base. Congress was a Hindu dominated party with a scattering of Muslims to fulfill its secular credentials. The Congress leaders were too much stubborn for their own good. If settlement was reached early on, we could have prevented portioning, a few wars, terrorist activities and loss of numerous innocent lives.

Do you think the corruption and inefficiency was just the things of past? The story continues but the characters and platforms have changed. The irony is we people aid and abet the deterioration of our systems.

Recently our PM said unlike China our growth is based on values. But who has been growing- not the small and medium level farmers, not the slum dwellers, not the migrant labourers, not the tribals from West Bengal, not the tribals near Narmada Dam.

 According to data from Forbes list number of Indians with 10 crore dollars has doubled since the last year. May be the development is for an exclusive club alone.

The Indian media has teamed up with India inc. to carry out stories on how businesses were able to start and grow in the right way (without paying any bribes) post ‘90s. Interestingly a few weeks back the cover story in ‘Outlook’ was that Rs.73 Lakhs core is the amount of money involved in various scams across the country and most of them during the post-liberalization era. When a scandal breaks out a political party or a politician falls under the firing line and never a business man. And our beauracratic system has developed to withstand any corruption charges or negligence of duty. Recently an article appeared in NY times on the 26/11 anniversary. All the police and political officers suspended on after math of 26/11 has either been reinstated or promoted. I haven’t read a single Indian media source coming up with this issue.

Why I want this post to be different is I am not going to blame politicians or business men alone for the degradation of India as a country. Do we really care about the corruption that goes around us? Do we care how much money is being swindled or what percent of public property sold off or natural resources looted? Or is the fight against corruption for films alone.

An entire generation of Indians has been cultivated, unable to respond to anything. Those who respond has been singled out as mischief makers. Why did this happen?

We have been fed with story after story about ordinary man making it big due to his hard work. Our films have graduated from middle class heroes who worked as a coolie or a driver to multi millionaire hero with a helipad in his home. Needless to say our sops feature women wearing heavy jewelry even when they are at home.

The country which once idolized ordinary man is now picturing him as the failed man. Yeah, I don’t say that there is no good part at all for this trend. We have grown more competitive in the global arena. More guys graduate from innumerable B-schools. Still more go to foreign universities. Even the ordinary Indians started investing in stocks. New businesses opened up and new fields are eagerly explored.

But sadly the means to achieve the wealth is considered secondary to the ends. We are growing more tolerant to inefficiency and corruption.

So one section of the society always stands at one end of the stick while the other section lives by sucking on what is rightfully theirs. They can be tribals in Narmada or West Bengal. They can be the Balmikis in Gujarat or Muslims in Kashmir, or even the Arunachal youths. They can be slum dwellers in Mumbai.

Can we expect them to react silently always? With time they are going to react in terms of jehadi terrorism, naxalism or even murder, robbery, rape etc. if our neighbors aid the partisan movement in the country, remember they are just fertilizing the root cause. It’s easy to destroy the partisan movement- burn the roots.

For all the media working over-time blaming china for all the maladies in the north eastern border, why not high light the quality of life enjoyed by the construction workers and farmers on the other side. The construction workers are paid well and gets good accommodation. The farmers enjoy great quality of life.

Even when we idolize USA, have we ever pondered how come a factory worker drive around in good quality vehicles and send their children to good colleges? In both of the above cases state takes responsibility to provide their citizens with good education, health care facilities. They protect their farmer’s right while asking dumbos like India to remove theirs. They ensure their minorities are not neglected and they see to it that the natural resources are protected. In USA we see a justice system which is swift in action.

If we want things to improve let’s get this idea into our heads that everyone has the right to live, earn and enjoy as much as us. And let’s ensure they get their rights. The external enemies will fall into place naturally.

Let’s stop reading papers who makes issues out of non issues. For e.g. when the prices of food items are spiraling up we discuss Liberhan, sex scandals from B-wood.

Let’s open our eyes to see the system deteriorating  in front of our eyes. We have inherited a senseless system. Let’s make some sense out of it.

The first time I felt tender feelings towards a girl was during my school days. She was the most beautiful one in our school. Never have I felt such a passion.
Like all the popular ones, she was darling of well to do and good looking guys. So I never had the remotest chance. It has been years since I have seen her. I have got no idea where she has ended up. May be she has married an NRI . Who knows…

After the first love it was a period of lust. I fell in love with the bodies of the beautiful ones. The passion became more strong and hot and animal like. The feelings lost its tenderness.
There is nothing wrong with wanting a girl because of her full figure. But care must be taken to put full stops at points where it has to be put. We have been taught that wanting a woman is sin. Most of our moral stand on sex is based on what missionaries taught us in the times of Victoria. There is in fact a sex position called missionary position which is regarded as the only permissible one by orthodox people, even today.

I am not able to say what pure and true love is. But I am damn sure that for me looks of a girl matters, call it lust or whatever. But I hate taking relations for granted. Even in the short time you have got for the relations live it to the fullest. Give the other person some moments to savor.

I have been hearing about this book for a long time. I was trying to get my hands on it, but to no avail. This Onam exhibition as I was walking through the stalls I came across a book stall. I was just browsing through when my eyes fell on this book. I grabbed it with both my hands. Thus my dream for some time had been fulfilled even though I had to put away buying some other things I had planned for the day.
It is a Malayalam book written by K.S. Aniyan on the incidents that happened in the life of Dr. V.P. Gangadharan. He is an oncologist working with the Cancer patients. The stories in the book are enough to melt the heart of even the cold blooded. I don’t have any copyright for the thing. But since I believe this story is going to touch anyone who stumbles on my blog, I am compelled to write.
The name of the book is ‘Miracle called life’. I am just translating story here. May be I would rather say it is an abridged version.

No matter how much pain a man has been through, he will be very reluctant to leave his life. He tries to hold on to his last thread of life as his time comes. May be this world is too beautiful to leave.
But it was the first time the doctor was witnessing such a situation. As Sophiya is entering her last days she is smiling more and more. She had a cancer no woman wanted to have- breast cancer. Removing a woman’s breast was like removing her womanhood. But here he is standing perplexed. Because normally he is meant to comfort her. But here she is lying on her bed with a smile and asking for her best friend, Sunandha. Her husband was staring in to the lake through the window with no emotion on his face. That man perplexed the doctor more.
‘Even he is getting bored of this place’, she said.

When she was brought to him cancer had entered in to the most advanced stages. A wound had opened up in the breasts and worms were wriggling in the pus that oozed out. He was shocked. She has been suffering all this pain silently.
‘Didn’t u feel like coming here earlier?’, he asked a bit shocked and a bit angry.
‘Doctor, she didn’t tell anybody about this. We found out when we went for a visit.’ The nuns who brought her here told him.

What were these nuns doing here? Why she is suffering all this as if she is enjoying the extreme pain. The husband who is staring listlessly, unmindful of the happenings around him, not knowing that his wife had a breast with pus oozing out. Doctor could not draw a clear picture out of this story. He was eager to weave together these mysterious threads.

 
One day as he reached the room during his routine rounds, he heard a crying. He saw woman crying over Sophiya. That was Sunandha, Sophiya’s best friend and someone the doctor wanted to meet. And it was she who unfolded the clear picture of Sophiya’s life story.
‘Sophiya was brought up by nuns in a catholic run orphanage.‘

‘Although she was an orphan, she was talented and very beautiful’

‘Sophiya….beautiful???’ he could not visualize this human skeleton as ‘once up on a time..Beauty-queen’.

‘When she was married off to a well off family everyone felt happy for her. At last she is getting a secure future and a family to call her own. But she had been cheated. The family didn’t reveal that their boy was a mad man.’

‘But it was his brothers who became mad due to lust when they saw her. They dreamt about having sex with the wife of their retarded brother. One day one of the brothers beat her for refusing to sleep with him. Hearing the sound Sophiya’s husband came. The retard started beating her up, hearing the lies of his brother. This became a daily routine. Either let her brother in laws fuck her or get beaten by her husband. The beauty of hers became her curse’

Now the fog lifted. Everything became clear. She is suffering all the pain to destroy her body, destroy her greatest curse. She is smiling because from now on no one will have a lust for her, no one will want to take off her chastity. She had prevailed over all the flesh eaters who wanted her body.

The husband sat in the corridor staring into nothing.

(The story is titled as ‘Smile of fire’. The way I wrote this story won’t come even come close to the real one. So if you get the book don’t think twice. Grab it. And remember this is not a fiction a real life story

A questio I ask myself is why di I keep on blogging. I am not a good blogger. A few number of people read my blogs. Then why do I do it again and again with a vengeance.

I want the world to hear what I think of it. I think critically about my surroundings and that reflects in my blog.

Earlier we had writers who instigated revolutions, cameup with break through ideas and set the world on fire with their pen. But today writers get into the news for the awards or lifting from other works or sexual content or other controversial topics or the huge royalty they recieve.

The question we ought  to ask ourselves is can we think outside the perimeters we have been taught? Can we cross the boundary we were asked not to?