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.

Recollecting and contemplating....

I was supposed to write the first two section of this post quiet earlier but couldn’t do so majorly due to my laziness and partly beacuase I wanted to test how much sensitive I can be towards this issues over the period of time. Quiet along post this is but I hope it wont be boring. Every word describes my personal views and hence would not comply with others views.

26th November 08

The day was no different than the usual and so wasn’t the night. After dinner I, as usual, was multi-tasking. Watching some programme on television, surfing on net and chatting with friends on messenger, just the routine.

At 11:32 pm I bid farewell to a chat friend of mine from Ahemdabad and was about to turn off the pc when the same friend sms’ed me saying something like "This time your city has been attacked by terrorists. Check the news." Well … well … well … I thought, nothing new, and turned to the news channel. They were showing the Latest updates and Live coverage but I wasn’t very keen. My mom came to the room sometime after midnight and half asleep, she asked me if I was going to class tomorrow. I told her to see the news and that there seems to be some tension so I might not go. As I was finishing the line, in came my sister. She too, received sms from her friend informing about the incident. They both watched for a couple of minutes and went to sleep and so did I. It was not until next morning that I realized the seriousness of the situation incident. My dad and sis wanted to check the conditions before leaving for office and so the television was on when I opened my eyes to a scene of firing at Taj. Then it dawned upon me that it indeed was a terror attack and not just a small issue blown up by the media. It was no rumor. Our dear Bombay was attacked. My television hardly got rest in those 3 days. It would be on throughout the day and my sis would wakeup in the night hoping the situation was under control and watch the news for an hour or two. On the last day of the retaliation, I felt so drained out looking and hearing the news for so long that if started to feel nausea tic.

By the end of the whole episode, I was filled with sorrow, anger and helplessness. My eyes welled up looking at the figure of dead people which, being a mass media student, I knew was much less than the actual count. I knew none of those who lost their life yet I could feel the pain. I was also angry, not just with the politicians, the navy, the coast guard etc. etc. but with myself. There I was sitting in front of the television absolutely unable to anything to stop it. I was helpless. I felt amputed.

1st December 08 -

A few days after the carnage I went to visit the Taj Hotel. Oh, how much I loved looking at her. I always had a dream to go in Taj and have at least a cup of tea. I believed that one cannot resist to dream about getting in there just once in a lifetime. Now there it was, barricaded, burnt, bombed, drilled with bullets, and stained with blood. I didn’t image the amount of people who would come to see Taj at that time. The media was still there, police officers were on duty and not letting anyone trespass. The road from near the Gateway of India was completely blocked and I could only see the Gateway and Taj Towers on my right. So I took the road from Colaba Causeway that leads to the back side of Taj. Luckily, fewer people had been standing there. I cloud now see the old Taj Heritage wing form quiet close. From where I was standing, she looked absolutely fine. Just the same old lady I had seen so many times. But there were huge coverings that blocked the view of the garden where probably the scene was still untouched.

I requested the constable on duty and asked to permit me entry inside the barricade just till a small rock near a pillar of the building behind Taj where someone just like me had offered prayers earlier. The constable obliged and let me in. I kneeled at the stone that had two wilting roses and a burnt out candle on it, added a red rose I had got and closed my eyes. I was so blank, there wasn’t a single thought that came to my mind that very minute and that made me so scared. I stepped back behind the barricade and looked at Taj once again only to imagine how the incident would have taken place and what the people stuck inside would have gone through. I couldn’t hold back the tears and turned away....now i took the third road that leads to Taj. This time I could see a window on the top floor burnt to ashes. All the windows and doors on the ground floor were closed with big ply sheets to obstruct the view of inside. On my way out I saw a place that was hustling with crowd of people and realized that it was Cafe` Leopold. Till this moment, I had never noticed this place on any of the numerous occasions I happened to be on that street. Two of the stone pillars in front of the cafe were filled with wax of the candles lit last night. Everyone wanted to see the scars left behind on the place. However, I saw the scars not on the place but on the minds. Many of the visitors had damp eyes, even the foreigners. Most of them were there to vent out the sorrow they felt for the loss of the many lives. But at the same time I was appalled at the number of people who came there as a picnic. Dressed in the best outfit from their closet, full with makeup, with cameras and whole family laughing and jumping. I wondered if I need to go and tell them that they were about to see a place where a lot of people DIED just a few days ago. I couldn’t believe to see some college groups merrily going around to see Taj. How could one be so happy to visit such a place? It wasn’t the Taj - symbol of riches, but it was The Taj - mourning for innocent lives lost. "To one his own", I said to myself and returned home with a numb and sunken heart.

26th December 08

Resolved to pen down my much-awaited thought I woke up to find the same numbness. Newspapers were filled with the pictures of the attack. Survivor stories and articles of family members who lost their close one spilled across the pages. It’s a month after the terror attack and like me; all media personnel were waiting for the day. Questions, questions and question everywhere, on every mind who did or even did not lose a near and dear one. Why did it happen? Who was responsible? Were we incapable or ignorant? Can we....no...How should we reform? And many more such questions. I had been critising media for cashing on the issue, to politicize, to alter, to do blah blah blah .... quiet like a villain. But I would definitely like to appreciate the way they have taken this opportunity to get the common man's voice heard by the top level individuals of the nation. I don’t know what it will ultimately result in. But a necessary step is taken and that is definitely commendable.

Bombay has always been a resilient. It gets back to work very quickly, and everyone says kudos to this spirit of Bombay. But doesn’t this hamper the progress in away? Bombay tends to forget things very quickly due to the pace of life, but then we also forget to take precautionary measures to avoid the same problems again. Riots, bombasts, water clogging............everything is repeated so many times that we are becoming insensitive towards them. When I hear about a riot I say, “Its nothing new, who cares? its going to be a half day drama and tomorrow everything will be back to normal as if nothing has ever happened in here." This is not a good sign. I don’t feel good about this. The rage, the anger, guilt that we couldn’t do anything to stop it is the only fuel that can motivate to take assured measures for preventing any such disaster further.

This attack not only made me think about how ineffective our system is but also made me aware that I have shied away from my duties. Ever since I got the Right to vote I have voted only once and that too was just for the fun. I have taken it as a Right when it fact it is my duty towards the society. Every vote is precious and if one doesn’t vote or vote just for the sake of it, then he/she doesn’t have the right to complain against politicians. If I myself am responsible for getting these politicians at power then I myself am equally responsible for the degrading quality of system. So from now on I resolve to be responsible and be dutiful towards voting!

One more thing that I had noticed was that we all have stood united during crisis. But why be united only in adverse conditions? Why can’t we be united all the time even during the happier time? if we stay united and fight back we will be sting enough not to be mistaken as vulnerable to such terror attack. I think his time the terrorist have been successful, as I (like many others, I believe) am still grim, scared and the scar this time is deeper than ever for time to heal it sooner. Hope to see a change, to bring about a change, a change for better life.

Nostalgic Days of Rain

11 Oct’08

After few weeks of sunny days, Bombay (Mumbai) was once again showered with rains during the second half of Navratri. To some it was relief from the heat, to some it ruined their Garba-Dandia plan, while I think it was in a way welcome to the godess “Durga”.

One could see the drama in the evenings when the clouds would gather to perform, riding on the winds, flashes of lightning filling the skies accompanied by the orchestration of the thunders. All beautifully composed, produced, directed and presented by Mother Nature. And the whole scene reminds me of the thoughts I had in my mind during the transition from waiting for the rains to the onset of it.

Just a look away

The much awaited monsoon came a bit early this time. Yes, much awaited, unlike most of the Bombayites (Mumbaites as they prefer to be called now) I was eagerly waiting for monsoon. Reason? Memories of last year’s monsoon and my new found love for photography.

Last year we shifted to new house and that opened us to more of the scenic beauty around. The dry and dead looking hills around would suddenly come to life in lush green embrace of the nature, dramatic performance by clouds of all shades from fluffy white to wet and heavy grey can be seen in the sky above. Even the small house garden of us cultivated and nurtured by my sister would be filled by colorful flowers. It was this that always made me long for the rains.

Being on the 7th floor gave me more open access to look around. The onset of rains would bring the greys in sky that would envelope the Matheran hills. The thumb like Karnala fort too would play a peek-a-boo through the clouds. The hills around have now been decorated further with falls. Every day brought new beauty and new forms that I couldn’t resist but capture. And the evenings were no less. Sky would sometimes look like a painting and other times like a palette with colors splattered around.

One thing that has been very evidently felt by all of us at my home is the amount of pollution. All through the summer there would be a haze spread everywhere and in the mornings a thick blanket of smog could be seen too. Fortunately, in the monsoon, the environment looks very clear as if some dust has been washed off our eyes. But it also makes us aware that now is the time to wake up and take some action or else soon the monsoons too will be blurred by the industrial haze.

With nature at its fullest now is the time to venture out and enjoy the most. But even while at home, I keep running to the windows and the terrace to capture as much as i can. And this is when I remember some photographer say on animal planet, "People ask me how you capture such beautiful moments? and I say that sometimes I just keep the camera aside and look around as what camera cannot capture can be captured and preserved as memories by my mind, and that is the ultimate pleasure".