This day that year....!

A year after the terror attacks on Bombay, I wonder how things have changed for the betterment. Or to be precise has there been any change for that matter?
The anger, the anguish that mobilized the young generation to come ahead and make their voice heard has diminished in a short time span. May be, just may be, had we been persistent on the govt and the judiciary taking up immediate action, there might have been faster course of action taken. The judicial procedures have always been slow and drag. A terrorist who has killed so many innocent people is given special protection, spent huge amount on keeping him alive in a bid to get more information about the sources of terrorism. But isn't the chain so long that in the process he will be rewarded with a considerable amount of life and enjoy the previledge of being alive. Now that he knows that he will be protected and made to live, he must have relaxed and hence changed his initial statement.
On the other hand policemen still carry the old guns that many will never use them ever during their tenure. the security forces are still not doing the best they can otherwise. People who were shouting slogans, slowly forgot those words. now, after a year, all the emotions might come up again only to fade out in a day or two. Not just others, but I too, am sitting in front if the computer writing this blogpost, which I know will not be read by many. Yet trying to convince myself that I m doing my bit by writing about it. but deep down I know that this is of no use.Action speaks more than words. i may not be able to change the system completely but i can atleast be a responsible citizen and fulfill my duties. This will be that BIT which will actually make a difference.
Once again i feel that the "never say die" spirit of Bombay is making us shameless enough to get over an incident like that and move on.

may all the victims R.I.P.
and
Salute to the martyrs.

Fuss Class...

This week I happened to travel in the First class boogie for the first time. Fascinated as any Second class traveler might be, I was very enthusiastic about this particular journey. I found it quiet amusing to get the ticket without standing in a queue and looking at the smirking faces of those in the queue, while i proudly asked for a First class ticket. I felt like dancing on my way to train from the ticket counter .... I was performing a free style dance in my mind. Within moments the train arrived and I got into the dream boogie with red stripes across on the outside. Wow! There i was in the First class boogie, how exciting...

I looked around and found people rushing in and taking seats, reading news paper, talking on mobile phones. Hmmmm, something is missing, I thought! The train started and with passing stations it became clear what was missing.

Just before the train left, an old fellow got down and changed the boogie...the guys sitting across him laughed mockingly signing that they knew he wasn't a First class material.

A guy entered while the train was leaving the platforms...poor chap, he was panting so badly... he rushed to find a seat so that he can breath in some air. Unfortunately all the seats were taken. He tried accommodating his bag on one of the baggage carriers, but he was so exhausted that he couldn't even think of what he needs to do and looked confused. He paced across the cramped boogie twice before settling for a small space to keep his bag. Sweating profusely and still trying to catch a breath, he asked a passenger to make some place for him to sit. "No fourth seat?" the guy looked disappointed. With no other option left, he came and stood in the passage. The cool breeze relaxed him a bit.

Crowd started to increase with passing stations. Everyone was struggling to get some space to stand. And then the typical fight between passengers took place. Nothing new I told myself. The man standing in front of me was some 6 ft and quiet healthy. Within five mins of alighting the train he started to dose off and with no inhibition he was leaning against my small frail frame. The crowd wasn't as much as it is in Second class, but this man made me experience the rib crushing pressure one gets in Second class.
Somehow I managed to get down at my destination, and mind you the "getting down" felt no different from the Second class. Gosh! I thought, I don't feel any pride in traveling by First class anymore. Yes the crowd was a bit less than otherwise. But the passengers had so much of attitude, and not just the executive types but the regular passengers (probably some govt. employees who can now afford First class) too. Everyone had an air above themselves. They were no less rowdy. They displayed equally foul mouth as that of their Second class counterparts.
And above all, the thing that was missing ..............Humanity!

Madness of mankind...

Of recent I have heard the stupidest thing that mankind can assume. Now human beings are deciding about what is natural and what is not. Since when did a species is given the right to do that? Especially the one species that had done almost all unnatural things that one cannot even think about.

Since when did it become natural to:
...destroy natural habitat to create an artificial one to live in.
...tame individuals of other species for ones own benefit.
...mess around with the order of nature to create new species or cause mutation in the existing one.
...breed among the siblings of a particular species.

Nature has its own ways to say "it's unnatural!"
like to :
...discard abnormal foetus in form of miscarriage.
...shorten life span of deformed newborns.
...wipe out of species that cause harm to the earth.

These are a few things that I could think of as examples. So in short I want to say that let nature decide what is unnatural, for human beings still have not attained the position above nature. For god's sake get over the false idea of us being the decision-maker.

And now a few examples where some things that are a part of nature yet are considered unnatural by mankind (how idiotic!):
...patterns and discolouration in plants is accepted as variegated while the same condition in human beings (vitiligo) is considered ugly and still socially unacceptable.
...some male penguins are seen to form a couple with another male, adopt a stone as egg, reject any advances from the female counterparts and even raise an orphan offspring as its own. Yet homosexuality is considered criminal act and looked down upon by the society.

We don't have much time...we have done enough damage to the nature for it to take a toll. So lets have a peaceful life for as much time as we have and let nature decide its course. It's time when human beings understand their role on the earth and not try to over-rule it.

When a Swine flew over my city!

It started as a pandemic in Mexico and soon made it big in the media circles all over the world. The origin seem so far that one would hardly imagine it to land in India. Special care was taken so that the fliers don't carry the virus across the nations. Inspite of the safety measures (wonder if there were any taken in India) some of the travelers were found positive and soon Pune became a hot spot for H1N1.....

And then started a circus. Media fed on the rumors and fear of the common man. Reports of freshly detected patients bombarded day in day out on all the news channels. This was followed by the crazy ideas of how the masks protect people against the virus, which is in fact not clinically proven. Adding to the lack of knowledge, people were made to believe that even the doctor masks that were nothing but just a plain piece of cloth with stings can provide some relief. Pictures of masked people from various countries wasn't a new sight. Even Pune was, till recent, know for its scarf covered two-wheeler riders. But seeing a people use mask in Bombay came as a surprise. Aren't they supposed to atleast evaluate whether the masks provide any safety? The worst part was that the educated class especially the students category too was following the media reports blindly and using the suffocating masks. While traveling in train i once overheard a student saying, "arre yaar i don't know if i will die with swine flu but i m sure i will choke to death if i used this silly mask." ...and still he was using it just like many others. It is really surprising how media can influence people on some petty issues but fail to do so in the much more crucial issues. Now some people will say that you cant blame media completely. Ofcourse I cant, media is smart enough. They first make a big deal out of nothing and when they know that they have achieved their target then they slid in interviews from experts about the reality that H1N1 is no worse than the common flu pandemic and that most of the deaths caused were not due to the swine flu but due to underlying medical conditions.....so what was the fuss about? Well to me its all about money making baby ...its all about money. The mask manufacturers must have made profit of lifetime and news channels had food to munch on for weeks.

Well I would like to end this post with a funny incident. When I witnessed thousands of masked bombayites i couldn't stop laughing and with the funniest sight being a bunch of girls in all whites wearing bright yellow masks remind me of ducks. Little did I knew then that I would encounter one at my home the next morning. My eyes popped out, jaw dropped to the floor and split my sides when dad pulled over a bright yellow mask and proudly marched away for his office.

Bad Bad Blogger...

Being inactive for more than a few days is considered to be a bad blogger in the blogger's world.
Well I don't actually mind being a bad blogger since there is virtually no one who is keeping track of my blog and the most importantly the reason for me starting this blog was to express myself....for more of a selfish reason.

And now i am thinking of being more selfish....more often!

Unusual inspiration...

I have always been a movie buff. Movies not just entertain me, but at times take me in a trance. There is something more that attracts me to movies. And I face unusual situations after watching some movies.

One such situation happens to be today after watching a movie "Namesake". A topic so regularly explored by so many directors, but what differentiates this movie from any other movie on similar topic is the treatment given to it. There is no persuation from either side, there is no advocacy of western or Indian lifestyle. The movie is plain reflection of a family settled abroad and about a name Gogol. Throughout the movie I became more and more eager to read that book of Nickoli Gogol. My fascination of the book was at peak when finally Kal Penn starts to read it towards the end of the movie. He read a line from the tale ... and ... it struck to me that i know the story, I have read it.

Few years back I had bought a book called "The Russian Short-stories". It had this tale, "The Cloak" by N.V.Gogol that i read very unintrestingly. Back then, I found most of the russian stories more difficult to understand. But today a movie has compelled me to pull out that book from my shelf and read it again.....but with much more intent and conviction!

Of proximity and pain

Life is so precious that no amount of money can buy it nor can it pay for the loss of it. There is no compensation for it, no replacement either. But no individual can live for eternity. Each one of us will have to face the ultimate fate, death. This inevitable fact of our life is know to us for millions of years and yet we feel a pain when a life is lost, weather its of a close one or a stranger, an animal or a plant. The loss leaves an impact on the individuals around. This impact depends on various factors(or i believed so). the foremost being the closeness of the individual to the life lost. the further one goes the less the impact is. I am one of those who dont believe in tagging names to relations and hence the closeness i m talking here about is not restrected to friends and relatives only but it also encompasses the individuals around the world that i feel connected to. This can be seen in case of celebrities. Fans feel the pain of losing their beloved star. To some they are friends they would never meet in lifeime while to others they are at par with god whom they even worship. Loss of such a life has a wider and stronger impact. whereas the death of a stranger do stir the inside of me, but I can cope with it in a relatively shorter time.

I used to believe that size, or better said the species, of the individual also determines impact. My beliefe was that human beings are most affected with the loss of another human life and that this impact is lesser in case of the lost life being from another species. The smaller the individual the lesser the pain of losing it. I have never seen anyone crying over a dead ant, honeybee or snail. But this was changed completely when I had the first pet of my life. lt was last year when a special friend of my gifted me with 2 fishes(red-cap orandas) for my b'day. They were more special because they came from a special friend. I had them for hardly a month before one of them died. When I came to know that it wasn't acting normal I rushed home early from my office hoping it will make it through and wont die only to find it dead at the base of the fishbowl. Losing it felt like losing a family member. I couldn't have my dinner that night. I stopped talking to anyone and for over a week I kept to myself. During this time I lost the other fish too.I was glad for the other. It was so painful to see it lonely in that bowl. But I also noticed tht my family members seemed to come over it in much less time. Their routine was untouched. They watched the regular tv programs and enjoyed it equally on the dau the fish died. Was it so insignifiacnt for them? no, they too would talk to them, enjoy feeding them, appreciate their funny performances. Then how come i was so deeply affected while the other werent? or atleast they seems not to be effected? to this i realised tht it all depends on only one factor as to wot place the life hold in one's heart. The closer the one is, the more the pain, no matter what species or size the individual is of.

Human beings are blessed with emotions and ways to express them. Its this emotion that makes the impact more deeper. And so, no matter how much I convince myself tht death is inevitable it still leaves an impact on me ....... and every impact make me think over the value of each individual I have in my life.

Chirp chirp come Again!

"Once upon a time....", this would be the usual starting of a fairy tale in the early days. However, this is also the only phrase that comes to my mind now a days when I think of sparrows. Gauraiyya or Chidiya as they are called in our national language have become less visible these days. All of us have adored this sweet little bird through school poems. Harivanshrai Bachchan in his poetry "Neev Ka Nirman" has portrayed the sparrow as a courageous soul irrespective of how small she is. But today when I want to show a sparrow to my little nephew, all I could see is the ever increasing crows and pigeons. That’s when the phrase pops in my mind:

Once upon a time.....we would see the sparrows every now and then.

Once upon a time.....trees were laden with her chirps at dawn and dusk.

Once upon a time.....we had sparrows building nests in our house.

Today the evenings are either quiet or noisy with the honking horns and the grumbling machineries around. I wonder why there has been such a drastic change in the number of sparrows! Lack of habitat, some might say, but sparrows have long back adapted to the human construction and made it their home equally. Today how many people have a sparrow building nest in their attic, bathroom/toilet, above the windows? Hardly any!

One of the reasons is the, much talked about, pollution. Some scientists also believe that the sparrow get effected due to the wireless transmission zones like the mobile networks that are growing in the metros. Others can include the increasing number of bigger species like crows especially because they also tend to be the predator for the young ones of sparrow. The increase in the population of crows has been related to growing garbage dumping that facilitates easy access to food for the scavengers. This in turn has been affecting the balance in the species. Amidst all, the importance of this issue in the declining number of the sparrows cannot be overlooked.

Definitely, some steps are being taken for the conservation of sparrows. I have recently heard of a small organisation that helps you to attract sparrows to make her nest in your house. I was really impressed by such kind of initiative, but it has to be a widespread effort to actually make any difference. Since sparrow is such a common bird and too small too we can easily misbelieve that we lack in observing or are not noticing them and that they cannot get extinct.

With a large number of species becoming extinct in a comparatively shorter span of time, I really hope the sparrow’s existence will not be restricted just to the pages of books.