Friday, January 22, 2010
Thursday, November 12, 2009
R K Anand - First Greenshoot of Congress Revival
What's the difference between Western News and our news ? Simple. Western news is almost irretrievably Westcentric. Even when Western corruption is discussed, the watchful mind can see the shimmering halo, hear the fluttering wings.
Smugness, "see we can discuss our dirty linen, can you ?," not outrage is the droning undertone.
Out news is eccentric.
In keeping with the national obsession for submission/domination, we believe not merely in unfairness and disproportion, but in its brazen, outrageous display.
Not only must injustice be done. It must be seen to be done. Not only must injustice be seen to be done. It must be reported and rationalised by the idiot savants of our ruling class on national television.
Yes. I am in a foul mood.
Because I saw the disgraced lawyer R K Anand appear on two networks, CNN IBN and Times Now, to pronounce his jurisprudential wisdom on the disgusting Manu Sharma out on parole matter.
If anybody wanted a dipstick survey of the brimming insanity of India's insular, idiotic ruling class - here it was - on full display !
http://www.timesnow.tv/Debate-Jessica-killer-misusing-parole/videoshow/4331740.cms
I googled RK Anand and found this little bit on The Telegraph.
Behind the curtain
Now for some news from poll-bound Jharkhand. The Congress, it appears, has struck a deal with Babulal Marandi of the Jharkhand Vikas Morcha. The credit for the pact should go to that old hand, RK Anand, and not to leaders such as Keshav Rao and Mukul Wasnik who are officially in charge of the polls in the state. Before the polls, the Congress, the grapevine has it, conducted a survey, which showed that the poll prospects of the party will suffer if it tied up with tainted politicians such as Shibu Soren. Taking the cue from the results, Anand got into the act and helped forge ties with Marandi who has a cleaner image to improve the Congress’s chances in Jharkhand. Anand must be hoping that the service rendered will improve his own chances of a raise in the pecking order as well.
The rehab appearance of RK Anand as a pundit of the Indian ruling class's idea of the rule of law,on two national news channels (maybe more ?) is not an accident.
It is another tender, "green shoot" of the rejuvenation of the India National Congress.
Cheers!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Faffing through the clutter
You create something for your little one. It works. It works so well, that your little one has taken it, used it and one day, you are watching tv and Amitabh Bachchan is using it.
Faff. It is a word, a space that you created, out of the forge of your intense concern and caring, to make it easy and playful for that tender and frail and effervescent, bundle of feelings and fears to talk to you. With whom you just had to connect.
So you would faff about school and teachers and friends, the little one sitting on your knee, or on a chair arm, but with your arm around it.
The little one may not hear you, but it could not have any doubt that you were there. The little one, whether it liked it or not, was not alone.
She took faff to school and then to hostel, to another school and then to college.
One day says," We just don't faff anymore Appa" .
Wow! you're thinking, so appa did get through to that bundle, through the voices on tv, through her ever expanding gaggle of friends and peers, your faff cut through the clutter.
PS: Feel free to start a convo. I would love to hear from you.
Faff. It is a word, a space that you created, out of the forge of your intense concern and caring, to make it easy and playful for that tender and frail and effervescent, bundle of feelings and fears to talk to you. With whom you just had to connect.
So you would faff about school and teachers and friends, the little one sitting on your knee, or on a chair arm, but with your arm around it.
The little one may not hear you, but it could not have any doubt that you were there. The little one, whether it liked it or not, was not alone.
She took faff to school and then to hostel, to another school and then to college.
One day says," We just don't faff anymore Appa" .
Wow! you're thinking, so appa did get through to that bundle, through the voices on tv, through her ever expanding gaggle of friends and peers, your faff cut through the clutter.
PS: Feel free to start a convo. I would love to hear from you.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Ordinarising The Extraordinary. The State Bank Of India Versus Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose.
 |
| From Drop Box |
If only you knew, the magnificence of the life of Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose would take your breath away.
If you are one of those fortunate few who have been blessed with the gift of wonder, you will find yourself yearning to be transported to the Calcutta of the early 20th century, wanting to find out how this handsome brown man even ventured to think those fantastic thoughts, with what steadiness and "madness" did he pursue them and finally by what miracle of industry did he make them material.
Consider this :
"A book by Sir Oliver Lodge, "Heinrich Hertz and His Successors," impressed Bose.
In 1894, J.C. Bose converted a small enclosure adjoining a bathroom in the Presidency College into a laboratory.
He carried out experiments involving refraction, diffraction and polarization.
To receive the radiation, he used a variety of different junctions connected to a highly sensitive galvanometer. He plotted in detail the voltage-current characteristics of his junctions, noting their non-linear characteristics. He developed the use of galena crystals for making receivers, both for short wavelength radio waves and for white and ultraviolet light.
Patent rights for their use in detecting electromagnetic radiation were granted to him in 1904.
In 1954 Pearson and Brattain [14] gave priority to Bose for the use of a semi-conducting crystal as a detector of radio waves.
Sir Neville Mott, Nobel Laureate in 1977 for his own contributions to solid-state electronics, remarked [12] that "J.C. Bose was at least 60 years ahead of his time" and "In fact, he had anticipated the existence of P-type and N-type semiconductors."
In 1895 Bose gave his first public demonstration of electromagnetic waves, using them to ring a bell remotely and to explode some gunpowder.
In 1896 the Daily Chronicle of England reported: "The inventor (J.C. Bose) has transmitted signals to a distance of nearly a mile and herein lies the first and obvious and exceedingly valuable application of this new theoretical marvel."
Popov in Russia was doing similar experiments, but had written in December 1895 that he was still entertaining the hope of remote signalling with radio waves.
The first successful wireless signalling experiment by Marconi on Salisbury Plain in England was not until May 1897.
The 1895 public demonstration by Bose in Calcutta predates all these experiments.
Invited by Lord Rayleigh, in 1897 Bose reported on his microwave (millimeter-wave) experiments to the Royal Institution and other societies in England [8].
The wavelengths he used ranged from 2.5 cm to 5 mm. In his presentation to the Royal Institution in January 1897 Bose speculated [see p.88 of ref.8] on the existence of electromagnetic radiation from the sun, suggesting that either the solar or the terrestrial atmosphere might be responsible for the lack of success so far in detecting such radiation - solar emission was not detected until 1942, and the 1.2 cm atmospheric water vapor absorption line was discovered during experimental radar work in 1944. "
Excellence will not be contained.
Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose was a mentor of the legendary Satyen Bose, of the Bose Einstein equations.
150 years after his birth, the global scientific community has finally given Jagadish Chandra Bose, a tiny portion of the recognition that was due to him.
What a song of splendour. Let us sing it again. This time with Ashok Parthasarathi.
" In 1895, Bose successfully demonstrated in public in colonial Calcutta the wireless transmission of electromagnetic waves.
Generating waves using a self-designed and built transmitter at one end of a link and sending them to a similarly built detector located 75 feet away, through intervening obstacles such as the body of Lieutenant General Mackenzie who commanded the British troops in the Calcutta garrison, he set off an explosion in a cache of gunpowder at the other end.
That Bose built all the equipment in the abysmal conditions that existed at the University of Calcutta then, and the country as a whole, in the 1890s makes the achievement even more mind-boggling and creditworthy.
Over the next decade, Bose obtained four U.S. and U.K. patents for his invention with the aid of friends.
It took some five years more for a technician of mixed Italian-Irish parentage, Guglielmo Marconi, to make a similar public demonstration.
In the heyday of imperialism, the Nobel Prize for physics was awarded to 35-year-old Marconi and a 59-year old German physicist from Strasbourg, Karl Ferdinand Braun, “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy.”
Bose was not given the prize although he had published his results in leading international journals and lectured at the Royal Institution in London in 1897 at the invitation of his teacher, Lord Rayleigh, one of the most distinguished British scientists of the time.
In 1899 Bose read a paper at the Royal Society in London, ‘On a Self-Recovering Coherer and the Study of the Cohering Action of Different Metals,’ on his invention of the coherer which used conductors separated by mercury.
In the paper, which was published in April 1899, he wrote: “For very delicate adjustments of pressure, I used in some of the following experiments an U-tube filled with mercury, with a plunger in one of the limbs; various substances were adjusted to touch barely the mercury in the other limb.
"... I then interposed a telephone in the circuit; each time a flash of radiation fell on the receiver the telephone sounded.”
Performing a series of experiments, Bose concluded that“there can be no doubt that the action was entirely due to electric radiation.”
More than two years later, Marconi transmitted radio waves across the Atlantic, using Bose’s coherer — with nary a mention of Bose.
Academic honours such as a D.Sc. by research from London University, a knighthood in 1917 and a membership of the Royal Society of London in 1920 that were conferred on Bose did little to affirm his pioneering status as the father of wireless.
Ironically, in a book by Orrin Dunlap, which Marconi personally edited, a page and a half is devoted to Bose, who is acknowledged by Marconi to have provided crucial support at a critical juncture when he needed it most.
Partial amends were made in 1998 when the Institution of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), New York, a global professional academy in the field, announced:
“Our investigative research into the origin and first major use of solid state diode detector devices led to the discovery that the first transatlantic wireless signal in Marconi’s world-famous experiment was received by Marconi using the iron-mercury-iron-coherer with a telephone detector invented by Sir J.C. Bose in 1898.”
With these revelations, belated though they are, we may safely say that Bose, and not Marconi, was the discoverer and demonstrator of wireless radio propagation through free space and thus the father of radio, television and all other forms of radio communication including the Internet. The IEEE inducted Bose into its Wireless Hall of Fame. "
What a horror then, what kind of a disease of the vision or intellect or character, that India's premier bank, the State Bank of India, would spend so much money on such a faint and fuzzy recollection of magnificence.
"A multifaceted genius with boundless curiosity, Jagadish Chandra Bose was a pioneer in several fields."
Is that all that you can say, SBI? Or is that all you know ?
Or is it that at a time when we need all hands on deck to build yet another " Rs 350 crore " memorial to Shivaji Maharaj, when our imaginations are hemmed in by a Jawaharlal this or Rajiv or Indira or Kalaingyar that, maybe getting even this feeble wheeze out was an exercise in pure valour ?
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Ritual Abuse Of Shashi Tharoor
The revealing truth about the orgy of pseudo outrage that has erupted over Shashi Tharoor's twitter, is that it is so unreal. So "Kafkaesque".
Anybody who has read a little more than Mills & Boone would know that "cattle class" is an egregiously offensive comment only to folks like me who believe all sentient beings have a right not to be abused and preyed upon by humans.
It is an unfortunate, covertly Hitlerian - the Jewish people were transported to concentration camps in cattle cars - but sardonic jibe of profiteering airlines and incidentally on the hapless passengers who allow themselves to pay to suffer the humiliation and discomfort.
I was also disappointed by Tharoor"s casual use of the colonial,profoundly Hinduphobic, cliche "holy cows" and would have preferred an environmentally appropriate "holy clunkers" but then that's me!
The ruling classes are neophobic and they are made profoundly uneasy when their cliches are stepped on. They worship their cliches.
Tharoor was well in line and could not be faulted for any fey act of cliche busting either.
Was Tharoor being funny ?
That's what our beloved Prime Minister thinks and the likes of M J Akbar expertly opine that it was a particular, rarefied kind of "Oxbridge" humour, so I'll give it a maybe.
To my mind Tharoor spouted a trite, innocuous,inanity on an informal, chat forum.
It took the particular genius of a section of the Congress party and our corrupt, ninny editorial class to take that and turn it into an incendiary that could inflame our masses to storm the Tihar Jail.
Incidentally, I have never stepped anywhere near the shadow of St Stephens or any other of our tony educational spas, but Tharoor and I used to write for "Hi- Young People's Newspaper".
I was also "The Most Outstanding Speaker" at a Model United Nations General Assembly conducted way back in Hyderabad.
The topic of debate was the proposed admission of Israel to the United Nations.The organisers asked me to represent India. I disagreed with India's position and represented France instead.
My position did not come from any family indoctrination, but from reading the novels of Leon Uris.
I can say now, that the horrors of Nazism that I read about sent me into a spin for weeks and I had no adult around me who could understand my angst and take me to a better place.
My decision to represent France was not a slick,political move. Merely a non destructive expression of my naive but felt moral outrage.
In one of those novels, a young recruit to the dreaded SS (whose motto was " My Honour Is Loyalty")is given a puppy to care for. After the recruit develops a bond with his charge, he is asked to murder it as an exhibition of his loyalty to the "larger' causes.
In Govind Nihalani's Tamas, ( sorry, have not had a chance to read the translation), a RSS recruit is shown as having been subject to this humiliation.
Is this a rite of passage or a humiliation ?
Is the betrayal and murder of an intelligent and ennobling companion an expression of human growth or retardation and perversion ?
As Erich Fromm, describes it with an erudition and clarity that certainly took my breath away, it is not loyalty that is demanded but obedience and conformity.
Authoritarian elements in society relentlessly seek to assert themselves by hounding us to kill our puppies.
Abraham was commanded by "God" to sacrifice his adult son as a "test of his loyalty".
The masochistic hankering to propitiate mysterious , powerful elements, by self humiliation and the sacrifice of best fruits of his productivity runs deep and dark through the history of man.
It is met by the sadistic response of self appointed high priests, who demand propitiations in the name of some awful, magical power.
The compulsive bribe giving and taking is of a piece of this same 'accumulated human wisdom".
If the Congress party had any comments about the Prime Minister's speech on "pervasive corruption", I certainly did not read or watch them.
Many people have at least acknowledged that the attack on Tharoor appears hypocritical - another media euphemism for lack of integrity, schizophrenia - that there is nothing real about the outburst in the Congress party.
If anything this has made the BJP expulsion of Jaswant Singh "look good".
But something is going on.
What we are watching is an exhibition of human cretinism and viciousness.
A psychotic, "domination" episode. A quintessential abuse of public space.
As readers of Divakar's Sathyagraha would know, I am quite familiar with this.
I saw this happening to my dear friend Shri Indrajit Gupta when he chose to join the United Front government.
Some of us may remember that Sam Pitroda in his early days, was subject to a similar witch hunt.
My family and I have been a victim since close to two decades.
The public humiliation of an extraordinarily talented and attractive Indian politician, without the slightest public purpose.
Unless a more humane sanity asserts itself, those who have been branded heretics, mavericks, bakras, turkeys or whatever will with your joyous approval and happy applause be burnt at the stake.
Anybody who has read a little more than Mills & Boone would know that "cattle class" is an egregiously offensive comment only to folks like me who believe all sentient beings have a right not to be abused and preyed upon by humans.
It is an unfortunate, covertly Hitlerian - the Jewish people were transported to concentration camps in cattle cars - but sardonic jibe of profiteering airlines and incidentally on the hapless passengers who allow themselves to pay to suffer the humiliation and discomfort.
I was also disappointed by Tharoor"s casual use of the colonial,profoundly Hinduphobic, cliche "holy cows" and would have preferred an environmentally appropriate "holy clunkers" but then that's me!
The ruling classes are neophobic and they are made profoundly uneasy when their cliches are stepped on. They worship their cliches.
Tharoor was well in line and could not be faulted for any fey act of cliche busting either.
Was Tharoor being funny ?
That's what our beloved Prime Minister thinks and the likes of M J Akbar expertly opine that it was a particular, rarefied kind of "Oxbridge" humour, so I'll give it a maybe.
To my mind Tharoor spouted a trite, innocuous,inanity on an informal, chat forum.
It took the particular genius of a section of the Congress party and our corrupt, ninny editorial class to take that and turn it into an incendiary that could inflame our masses to storm the Tihar Jail.
Incidentally, I have never stepped anywhere near the shadow of St Stephens or any other of our tony educational spas, but Tharoor and I used to write for "Hi- Young People's Newspaper".
I was also "The Most Outstanding Speaker" at a Model United Nations General Assembly conducted way back in Hyderabad.
The topic of debate was the proposed admission of Israel to the United Nations.The organisers asked me to represent India. I disagreed with India's position and represented France instead.
My position did not come from any family indoctrination, but from reading the novels of Leon Uris.
I can say now, that the horrors of Nazism that I read about sent me into a spin for weeks and I had no adult around me who could understand my angst and take me to a better place.
My decision to represent France was not a slick,political move. Merely a non destructive expression of my naive but felt moral outrage.
In one of those novels, a young recruit to the dreaded SS (whose motto was " My Honour Is Loyalty")is given a puppy to care for. After the recruit develops a bond with his charge, he is asked to murder it as an exhibition of his loyalty to the "larger' causes.
In Govind Nihalani's Tamas, ( sorry, have not had a chance to read the translation), a RSS recruit is shown as having been subject to this humiliation.
Is this a rite of passage or a humiliation ?
Is the betrayal and murder of an intelligent and ennobling companion an expression of human growth or retardation and perversion ?
As Erich Fromm, describes it with an erudition and clarity that certainly took my breath away, it is not loyalty that is demanded but obedience and conformity.
Authoritarian elements in society relentlessly seek to assert themselves by hounding us to kill our puppies.
Abraham was commanded by "God" to sacrifice his adult son as a "test of his loyalty".
The masochistic hankering to propitiate mysterious , powerful elements, by self humiliation and the sacrifice of best fruits of his productivity runs deep and dark through the history of man.
It is met by the sadistic response of self appointed high priests, who demand propitiations in the name of some awful, magical power.
The compulsive bribe giving and taking is of a piece of this same 'accumulated human wisdom".
If the Congress party had any comments about the Prime Minister's speech on "pervasive corruption", I certainly did not read or watch them.
Many people have at least acknowledged that the attack on Tharoor appears hypocritical - another media euphemism for lack of integrity, schizophrenia - that there is nothing real about the outburst in the Congress party.
If anything this has made the BJP expulsion of Jaswant Singh "look good".
But something is going on.
What we are watching is an exhibition of human cretinism and viciousness.
A psychotic, "domination" episode. A quintessential abuse of public space.
As readers of Divakar's Sathyagraha would know, I am quite familiar with this.
I saw this happening to my dear friend Shri Indrajit Gupta when he chose to join the United Front government.
Some of us may remember that Sam Pitroda in his early days, was subject to a similar witch hunt.
My family and I have been a victim since close to two decades.
The public humiliation of an extraordinarily talented and attractive Indian politician, without the slightest public purpose.
Unless a more humane sanity asserts itself, those who have been branded heretics, mavericks, bakras, turkeys or whatever will with your joyous approval and happy applause be burnt at the stake.
Thursday, July 16, 2009
"Normality" Vs Consciousness
The Radical Ms Laidlaw
What about this other bit of management folklore that appears to be reborn with every generation - that the first impression , allegedly made in less time than a blink of an eye, allegedly percolates deep down and takes possession of the recipient's subconscious and continues even without their knowledge to rule their relationship with the recipient forever and more ?
Till date, I have not had anybody call this kind of nano second management by its real name - Prejudice!
Consciousness, self awareness, resisting the impulse to "label", "brand", "pigeonhole" life to some fanciful and usually self serving idea of "normal", delighting in the wonder of the search and of discovery, these are ancient and radical - as in seminal NOT extremist - ideas that help us get real.
Ms Laidlaw emphasizes them with the conviction of personal experience.
Thanks.
Personal Branding vs. Self-Awareness
Georgina Laidlaw writes for Salon.com
What about this other bit of management folklore that appears to be reborn with every generation - that the first impression , allegedly made in less time than a blink of an eye, allegedly percolates deep down and takes possession of the recipient's subconscious and continues even without their knowledge to rule their relationship with the recipient forever and more ?
Till date, I have not had anybody call this kind of nano second management by its real name - Prejudice!
Consciousness, self awareness, resisting the impulse to "label", "brand", "pigeonhole" life to some fanciful and usually self serving idea of "normal", delighting in the wonder of the search and of discovery, these are ancient and radical - as in seminal NOT extremist - ideas that help us get real.
Ms Laidlaw emphasizes them with the conviction of personal experience.
Thanks.
Personal Branding vs. Self-Awareness
Georgina Laidlaw writes for Salon.com
Monday, July 13, 2009
Art 377 & India's GloboHomos
The sudden fuss and flurry about decriminalising homosexuality in India, reinforces the suspicion that contemporary Indian society may be a "boneless" wonder.
Very rarely does India allow itself acknowledge its problems and find solutions for them.
The case for decriminalizing homosexuality is unexceptionable and the mild questioning and narrow focus of the Delhi High Court's verdict is a passing breeze for the protection of personal liberties in this "secular country".
But why did it take so long ?
"Modern" India has to wait, generations, for a movement to suffer, sacrifice and develop in the West, acquire respectability, big funding and political clout , and only then will it offer itself as a franchisee for the idea.
Once all the right connections are established, the task of "modernisation" will be taken to some chosen among the babulog kay bablog, the courts will suddenly be possessed by a trailblazing zeal and India will have "modernised'.
A dread of lumpen religiosity and a consequent lack of a matter of factness about sex has kept Indians mired in agony and disease.
Ignorance and shame about sex has stunted more Indian lives than so called alternate sexual practices ever can.
The "Argumentative Indian" maybe a Nobel prize winning, bon vivant's vision of India.
But India's narcissistic elites prefer "shyness" and "modesty" in the face of disease and dementia.
BTW, in the light of recent events,
can we dare hope that the media will break its strange silence on the Skybus ?
Very rarely does India allow itself acknowledge its problems and find solutions for them.
The case for decriminalizing homosexuality is unexceptionable and the mild questioning and narrow focus of the Delhi High Court's verdict is a passing breeze for the protection of personal liberties in this "secular country".
But why did it take so long ?
"Modern" India has to wait, generations, for a movement to suffer, sacrifice and develop in the West, acquire respectability, big funding and political clout , and only then will it offer itself as a franchisee for the idea.
Once all the right connections are established, the task of "modernisation" will be taken to some chosen among the babulog kay bablog, the courts will suddenly be possessed by a trailblazing zeal and India will have "modernised'.
A dread of lumpen religiosity and a consequent lack of a matter of factness about sex has kept Indians mired in agony and disease.
Ignorance and shame about sex has stunted more Indian lives than so called alternate sexual practices ever can.
The "Argumentative Indian" maybe a Nobel prize winning, bon vivant's vision of India.
But India's narcissistic elites prefer "shyness" and "modesty" in the face of disease and dementia.
BTW, in the light of recent events,
can we dare hope that the media will break its strange silence on the Skybus ?
Sunday, July 5, 2009
India's Musical Salaam To Michael Jackson
Farewell Michael ! There were others before you -
John Lennon,
Elvis Presley
Charles Chaplin,
"Fatty" Roscoe Arbuckle,
Jerry Lee Lewis - martyrs to "maturity".
Thanks for not having been too "grown up".
It was enough that you helped make people the world over, sing, dance and be happy.
And to make a whole bunch of "grown ups" a whole lot of money.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Express Good. Repress Bad.
Grown ups do not shy away from discussing so called "unpleasant" issues. They know it is critical to express, unhealthy to repress. There is no saintliness in abandoning important issues. Problems need to be gathered, pondered over, a consciousness created and understanding arrived at.
Esteemed readers may be interested to know that Jon Vogel and Deepak Chopra as also Salon.com have found my comments worthy of inclusion. Eric R Danton heard me.
This is important because India's lugubrious editorial class, makes it a point to mutilate and distort my already severely restricted comments or not publish them at all. Bachi Karkaria and Anand Soondas as also The Indian Express have published the following comment:
divakarssathya says: June 19, 2009 at 02:42 PM IST
It has been well documented that rape is an act of domination and humiliation. So is corruption. Corruption is domination and humiliation of the very idea of the rule of law. So,In India today, where the systems of delivery of justice are in a frightfully derelict state, mutual consent is a mutual delusion. The Chief Information Commissioner who has systematically violated the RTI Act 2005 is no less psychotic, is no less heinous and an infinitely larger menace than an individual running amok.Shockingly,the Indian Press remains clueless and starry eyed. Welcome to Shiney Ahuja Versus The Chief Information Commissioner Of India http://sathyagraha.blogspot.com/ Read about how our sycophantic press treats high officials with kid gloves and rose tinted prose.
I have put these esteemed newspapers on the scent. Let's see what they come up with.
Extraordinarily, The Vatican appears to mirror my views on Michael Jackson.
However, I leave it to esteemed readers to opine whether, tongue in cheek is exactly the most appropriate tone of voice when mourning the passing of a tortured angel.
Vatican daily proclaims Michael Jackson immortal - for his fans
Esteemed readers may be interested to know that Jon Vogel and Deepak Chopra as also Salon.com have found my comments worthy of inclusion. Eric R Danton heard me.
This is important because India's lugubrious editorial class, makes it a point to mutilate and distort my already severely restricted comments or not publish them at all. Bachi Karkaria and Anand Soondas as also The Indian Express have published the following comment:
divakarssathya says: June 19, 2009 at 02:42 PM IST
It has been well documented that rape is an act of domination and humiliation. So is corruption. Corruption is domination and humiliation of the very idea of the rule of law. So,In India today, where the systems of delivery of justice are in a frightfully derelict state, mutual consent is a mutual delusion. The Chief Information Commissioner who has systematically violated the RTI Act 2005 is no less psychotic, is no less heinous and an infinitely larger menace than an individual running amok.Shockingly,the Indian Press remains clueless and starry eyed. Welcome to Shiney Ahuja Versus The Chief Information Commissioner Of India http://sathyagraha.blogspot.com/ Read about how our sycophantic press treats high officials with kid gloves and rose tinted prose.
I have put these esteemed newspapers on the scent. Let's see what they come up with.
Extraordinarily, The Vatican appears to mirror my views on Michael Jackson.
However, I leave it to esteemed readers to opine whether, tongue in cheek is exactly the most appropriate tone of voice when mourning the passing of a tortured angel.
Vatican daily proclaims Michael Jackson immortal - for his fans
Monday, June 22, 2009
Hemanta Da ! Madan Mohan sa'ab ! Michael Jackson ! Amar Rahe! Narcissistic India's Gratitude Deficit
June 16th was the 89th birth anniversary of Hemanta Da.
I would not have known this if I had not stumbled upon a news report in the Calcutta edition of one major Indian newspaper.
I've not had the good fortune of meeting Hemanta Da, but he like Rafi Sa'ab, Kishore Da and Mukesh and all the others were without a doubt members of my family.
They gave me joy and they gave me company, they inspired me and introduced me to shimmers and shades of mood and meaning.
They nourished my roots to my languages, culture and country as no school or teacher could have even tried.
To even think of death, in the company of such uproariously vivacious beings is mad. For me and millions of music lovers they will forever be our uncles and aunts.
Point 1. Bongs may not know much about TMS or Sirgazhi Govindarajan; but that is their problem and in a janma or two, I am confident they will sort it out.
But what I would really like the tone deaf, philistines of the Indian editorial class to know is .... Hemanta Da does not belong to Calcutta alone.
It is truly outrageous to tuck him away in a mohalla report. Hemanta Da is a national legacy.
A towering standard of virtuosity.
We are extraordinarily fortunate to have such a variegated legacy to celebrate.
So why does our media only want to dig graves and bury it?
June 25 was the 86th birth anniversary of Madan Mohan sa'ab. Born according to Wikpedia in Baghdad.
Now that's another global Indian!
What a magician!
Show me a woman today who can come on to a man for four minutes and eighteen seconds of sustained passion and I'll show you somebody who will very soon be made mincemeat by our necrophilous media.
Michael Jackson - Stopped Before He Got Enough
From a young age Jackson was physically and emotionally abused by his father, enduring incessant rehearsals, whippings and name-calling. Jackson's abuse as a child affected him throughout his grown life. In one altercation — later recalled by Marlon Jackson — Joseph held Michael upside down by one leg and "pummeled him over and over again with his hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks". Joseph would often trip up, or push the male children into walls. One night while Jackson was asleep, Joseph climbed into his room through the bedroom window. Wearing a fright mask, he entered the room screaming and shouting. Joseph said he wanted to teach his children not to leave the window open when they went to sleep. For years afterwards, Jackson suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom.
Jackson first spoke openly about his childhood abuse in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said that during his childhood he often cried from loneliness and would sometimes get sick or start to vomit upon seeing his father.
In Jackson's other high profile interview, Living with Michael Jackson (2003), the singer covered his face with his hand and began crying when talking about his childhood abuse.
Jackson recalled that Joseph sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as he and his siblings rehearsed and that "if you didn't do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you." Wikipedia
Any consideration of Michael Jackson's awesome oeuvre has to include his angelic triumph over his brutal childhood.
His music was his triumph. A writing in the sky iteration of his love and sanity.
And just as violent repression by sections of the establishment is a thick black strand running through the history of Rock and Roll, so is love, love as feeling and love as healing, a theme through Michael Jackson's work.
No question, Michael Jackson was one of the sanest human beings of the 20th century.
To attempt to anachronise Michael Jackson is ridiculous. As for that matter is rest of Kaveree Bamzai's hurried, ahistorical, all motion no memory piece.
Harried and narcissistic column writers may want the President of the United States all for themselves,but POTUS would do well to acknowledge that he stands on the shoulders of many, many human beings who stood up and asserted their sanity.
Farah Khan makes a confession of the most acute cultural malnourishment, when she calls MJ her "guru".
O Tempora O Mores
What about the allegations of child molestation ?
First, I never believed them.
Second, remember they were brought to you by the same wonderful folks who gave you Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Third, the world over children, women and others who are not certified members of the power structure are treated with varying degrees of brutality. Those in power are quickly handed a cloak of invisibility by the media.
A case in point.
How many in India know that the Vatican has paid out close to a hundred million dollars to compensate for victims of child sexual abuse by albeit "a small minority" of priests.
The Indian media has barely reported that story.
Was the media's heinous silence an act of concern for Indian children or a hideously wrongheaded act of leaving well enough alone ?
The world treated this angel of light the way it treats its children.
We starve them and deny them. We pimp them and brutalize them. We load their futures with the costs of our profligacy. And we kill them. Yet we believe and behave as though we have some special wisdom to impart.
Michael Jackson, there are many in India, who rooted for you since your Jackson Five days.
We are shocked and grieve your untimely passing.
But you will always be with us.
I would not have known this if I had not stumbled upon a news report in the Calcutta edition of one major Indian newspaper.
I've not had the good fortune of meeting Hemanta Da, but he like Rafi Sa'ab, Kishore Da and Mukesh and all the others were without a doubt members of my family.
They gave me joy and they gave me company, they inspired me and introduced me to shimmers and shades of mood and meaning.
They nourished my roots to my languages, culture and country as no school or teacher could have even tried.
To even think of death, in the company of such uproariously vivacious beings is mad. For me and millions of music lovers they will forever be our uncles and aunts.
Point 1. Bongs may not know much about TMS or Sirgazhi Govindarajan; but that is their problem and in a janma or two, I am confident they will sort it out.
But what I would really like the tone deaf, philistines of the Indian editorial class to know is .... Hemanta Da does not belong to Calcutta alone.
It is truly outrageous to tuck him away in a mohalla report. Hemanta Da is a national legacy.
A towering standard of virtuosity.
We are extraordinarily fortunate to have such a variegated legacy to celebrate.
So why does our media only want to dig graves and bury it?
June 25 was the 86th birth anniversary of Madan Mohan sa'ab. Born according to Wikpedia in Baghdad.
Now that's another global Indian!
What a magician!
Show me a woman today who can come on to a man for four minutes and eighteen seconds of sustained passion and I'll show you somebody who will very soon be made mincemeat by our necrophilous media.
Michael Jackson - Stopped Before He Got Enough
From a young age Jackson was physically and emotionally abused by his father, enduring incessant rehearsals, whippings and name-calling. Jackson's abuse as a child affected him throughout his grown life. In one altercation — later recalled by Marlon Jackson — Joseph held Michael upside down by one leg and "pummeled him over and over again with his hand, hitting him on his back and buttocks". Joseph would often trip up, or push the male children into walls. One night while Jackson was asleep, Joseph climbed into his room through the bedroom window. Wearing a fright mask, he entered the room screaming and shouting. Joseph said he wanted to teach his children not to leave the window open when they went to sleep. For years afterwards, Jackson suffered nightmares about being kidnapped from his bedroom.
Jackson first spoke openly about his childhood abuse in a 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey. He said that during his childhood he often cried from loneliness and would sometimes get sick or start to vomit upon seeing his father.
In Jackson's other high profile interview, Living with Michael Jackson (2003), the singer covered his face with his hand and began crying when talking about his childhood abuse.
Jackson recalled that Joseph sat in a chair with a belt in his hand as he and his siblings rehearsed and that "if you didn't do it the right way, he would tear you up, really get you." Wikipedia
Any consideration of Michael Jackson's awesome oeuvre has to include his angelic triumph over his brutal childhood.
His music was his triumph. A writing in the sky iteration of his love and sanity.
And just as violent repression by sections of the establishment is a thick black strand running through the history of Rock and Roll, so is love, love as feeling and love as healing, a theme through Michael Jackson's work.
No question, Michael Jackson was one of the sanest human beings of the 20th century.
To attempt to anachronise Michael Jackson is ridiculous. As for that matter is rest of Kaveree Bamzai's hurried, ahistorical, all motion no memory piece.
Harried and narcissistic column writers may want the President of the United States all for themselves,but POTUS would do well to acknowledge that he stands on the shoulders of many, many human beings who stood up and asserted their sanity.
Farah Khan makes a confession of the most acute cultural malnourishment, when she calls MJ her "guru".
O Tempora O Mores
What about the allegations of child molestation ?
First, I never believed them.
Second, remember they were brought to you by the same wonderful folks who gave you Saddam Hussein's Weapons of Mass Destruction.
Third, the world over children, women and others who are not certified members of the power structure are treated with varying degrees of brutality. Those in power are quickly handed a cloak of invisibility by the media.
A case in point.
How many in India know that the Vatican has paid out close to a hundred million dollars to compensate for victims of child sexual abuse by albeit "a small minority" of priests.
The Indian media has barely reported that story.
Was the media's heinous silence an act of concern for Indian children or a hideously wrongheaded act of leaving well enough alone ?
The world treated this angel of light the way it treats its children.
We starve them and deny them. We pimp them and brutalize them. We load their futures with the costs of our profligacy. And we kill them. Yet we believe and behave as though we have some special wisdom to impart.
Michael Jackson, there are many in India, who rooted for you since your Jackson Five days.
We are shocked and grieve your untimely passing.
But you will always be with us.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)