Sunday, August 15, 2010

China Passes Japan as Second-Largest Economy : http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/business/global/16yuan.html?_r=1&hp

Man gets beaten by politician and fined by police bcoz he overtakes his car. How dare he?

Man gets beaten by politician and fined by police bcoz he overtakes his car. How dare he overtake a politician in any respect?

Nobody overtakes a politician. Only other politician can. They practice zero tolerance in this regard. Otherwise they would not have become politicians. They would have been 'us'. 

The roads are built by the politicians for the politicians. They have exclusive and supreme right to be in the front always. This is a free country. The politicians are free beat to whoever overtakes them.

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A post for Independence day

My memory is quite vague. I think I was in the 10th or 11th grade. I
was attending this function to honor a freedom fighter.

He actually looked like one. He was old. Probably into his late 70s.
He had his white dhothi and kurtha with a Gandhi cap - you know what
that is.

He started his speech by telling how they sacrificed their lives to
fight for the freedom of the country and for their own. The way they
spent time in jails for years on, leaving their families behind. The
way they took the beatings by the British.

Then he said: 'I dont think it was worth it. We dedicated our life
thinking that we would be better off after freedom. I never thought
that India would be like what it is now. Our freedom struggle has gone
waste' and he started crying on the stage.

Nobody expected this drama on the stage and the organizers quickly
made him sit in his chair. They however honored him by putting a
garland and a shawl around him (I dont know why of all the things -
Shawl?? )

I still cant forget that day. The pain was evident. The pain of
wasting one's life. The pain of shattered dreams. The pain of lost
loved ones. The pain of living in independent India.

The India was not the India that this freedom fighter expected. I
think Post-Independence era was a total disappointment to these
people.

They had a dream of 'Independent' India, in vain.

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Monday, August 2, 2010

Upliftment of the downtrodden!

Near our house there is this little 'ashram'. These are places where
people practice celibacy and god and such stuff away from all the
scantily clad women that you find in the cities so that there is
absolutely no distraction. It is situated right next to a huge sewage
line which is one of the lines that carry the waste from each home in
Bangalore and out of the city. Traditionally such ashrams are known to
be at the banks of rivers where they can take a dip daily and clean
their arse.

I hear that a landlord had donated a part of his land for this ashram
so that he could get rid of the sins he has committed on earth and get
a first class ticket to heaven. Or probably no one wanted to buy that
land as it was right next to the gutter. Anyways, all this while the
ashram was a quite place in some remote place of Bangalore.

I think that the ashram people noticed that no one was peeping inside
their lives and seek blessings, listen to their preachings, kiss their
feet and wash their sins away. How can the lives of these saints go
wasted when there is so much moral corruption to be cleaned up in this
silicon city of india?

So, they have to attract people and one way was to be loud in what
they do. Atleast somebody will listen. They installed a loud-speaker
on the roof and started playing bhajans – devotional songs at specific
times each day. I must say that this is noise pollution. It has
disturbed my sleep during mornings these days. They start the bhajans
at 5.45 am (thats pretty early for me) and play for 45 mins and repeat
the same at regular intervals. It looks like they have picked up some
good classical music. Its good, but not when you are sleeping and not
when its so loud.

I dont understand the economies of these ashram's or mutts. But I hear
that they run the government in Karnataka. They are supposed to be
very influential and have the power to sway the minds of the voters at
the time of each election. So all the leaders and politicians go and
kiss their feet and what not and donate whole-hearteldy. This money is
used for charity and the general upliftment of the downtrodden
(Remembering from college days – this is the exact function of a bra).

I occasionally saw ashram people playing cricket. They also need some
entertainment in life. I wonder if they have have got cable. I wonder
what else is going on inside this ashram. Recently a guru was caught
on camera with an actress in bed. You never know! But we know that
they are also human beings with the same set of genetic forces acting
upon them.

I also hear that this ashram has got a grant from the government to
build a hostel for students of its own caste. Each ashram has to be
associated with a caste. Invariably only people of that caste will be
following them. A hostel for students is a nice plan. They will have
at their disposal, freshly baked minds to write whatever they want.

Enough said.

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