Of Candlelight Vigils and The Darkness That Looms in Every Corner in India

The brutal rape and victimization of a 23yr old woman in Delhi has caused considerable uproar in a nation of 1.2 plus billion citizens (and illegal aliens). It has led to a quickening on social media, boycotts of events, and late night candlelight marches in support of the girl who died nameless to the plethora who support her. 

And while these social forms of civil unrest are being conducted, a techie and a human resources (interestingly) professional rape a 20yr. old in Delhi on New Year’s eve.

Doesn’t someone see the satire here. For all those thousands of people objecting to the total disregard of an individual, a handful undo their efforts and put it all to shame. Educated individuals reared in families with women as primary educators and moral barometers act with no conscience. This is indeed a failing of this nation as a whole.

I recently read a tweet that there are 530 million men for 490 million women in India. What would the 40 million men without a mate do? Sadly none of the 40 million would think of living a bachelor’s life. In a supply hit economy, when demand shoots up, racketeering makes its ungainly presence felt supremely.

But the question here is larger than the one person brutalized. Its about the 15000 reported rape cases a year and the countless ones that go under the sheets due to fear, social stigma, or family pressure. It is about the 40 rapes per day that sound more like an engine and its measurement of efficiency than a malignant illness that has spread and rotted the very core of this country.

The question is about a country that is being raped and pillaged by its wardens and directors, by its caretakers and decision makers. 

Every instance of a politician corrupting the system is a rape of the constitution and the codes that make up this country. Every instance of the police victimizing the victims of a crime is a rape of the security system that this nation offers its citizens. Every instance of the judiciary misconducting justice is a rape of the civil system that binds the nation together. And we the electorate are party to this evil by either casting our votes for the wrong candidate or not electing to vote at all.

We need to wake up from a nation that is being run as a dynastic political drama to a nation that mobilizes the immense power that is lying dormant because its resources are expending energies in asocial causes or fighting stray antisocial incidents.

The childhood joke “Bharat hamari mata hai, humko kuch nahi aata hai” has turned into reality. We need to break the yolk and learn to walk the path of righteousness ourselves without the steering of a common collective of rogues that harness its people to their own profiteering.

Midnight candlelight marches only increase the carbon footprint of an already burgeoning economy already relying on fossil fuels while decapitating its ozone layer. Its time to rise above the candle and switch on the lightbulb of our intellect and conscience.

The Great India Geo-Political Strife

The news read that scared youth from north-east were escaping Bangalore fearing persecution for being different. Similar emotions were pulsing through folks living in Mangalore, Mysore, Hyderabad, and other southern states. Each of these people from far off distant eastern states, who had come to try their luck in the larger cities of the nation, were now abandoning their homes, hearths, and hopes to return to the desolate barren lands from where they had escaped. 

It saddens to think that citizens of the democracy of India, who have the right to access all parts of the soverign nation are being denied this basic right. If the country with its political and civil machinery cannot guarantee its citizens their fundamental rights as proclaimed and prescribed by the constitution, then the country has no right to enforce its constitution over these citizens.

This may sound radical but is equally and unequivocally rational. Citizens offer their trust, loyalty, and devotion to a country in exchange for safety, equality, and identity. A singular identity that binds across disparate cultures, languages, ethnicities, and appearance. For a country as geographically vast as India, it includes the Indo-Aryan Caucasiod, Dravidian Australoid, Sino Mongoloid, and Aboriginal Negroid stock that constitutes its diverse population. 

While the founding fathers of this septuagenarian nation were myopic enough to stitch across over five hundred princely states into one large grandmothers patchwork quilt, little did they foresee that within a handful of decades keeping the thread of cohesion intact would be chaotic and tenacious to say the least.

While the ruling political system has given into vox populi creating new states from erstwhile larger central ones, integrating these states together to form an stately nation is mission improbable (the optimist in me does not wish to deem it impossible while the pragmatist inside knows its far fetched).

What this country needs is absorption of its citizen diversities rather than amalgamation of its geographical jigsaw pieces mired in political apathy.

An Affair of States

The unity of this country is bound by a shimmering gossamer that belies its fragility.

How often do we read of a community insisting on elevated benefits that separate them from the diaspora that inhabits this country. How frequently do we find the leaders of this democracy advocating selective "equality" to bridge the unequal gap, further distanced due to this policy of duality.

Marginalization of the common man is not the solution to uplift the socially unequipped. But it surely breeds the inept from both stratas. The common turn reclusive and the disabled turn disinterested towards progress that is fueled by the spirit of competition. An old but relevant adage that captures the essence of the situation is "Give a man fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime".

We continue to dole out fishes to a cluster who are now waiting to be spoon-fed rather than using their skills to help themselves.

The classic division between the have-some, and have-not is not diminishing but rather interpolating. The have-not are gaining the ability to afford without the skill to appreciate. The have-some drain themselves constantly into a set of need-some-more. And the have-all continue to exploit the system to engorge their ever expanding hunger for more.

This is definitely a troublesome phenomenon for a country looking to proceed into the future. While the past impacts the present, it should not design the future.

We need to disengage ourselves from our idealistic vision of a utopian state with equality of resources and embrace the reality of equality of opportunities that extends across the national demography. Quotas should be out-quoted by achievements. The policy to squeeze and seclude should be replaced by increase and include. We need to enforce clarity towards a set of goals that include our strength in numbers while reducing the pitfalls of our inability to manage these numbers.

To achieve success in our 2020 mission we need the clarity of 20/20 vision.

Coke Studio: Music Across Messy Borders

On a hazy drunken night at a dear friend's place one of the co-inhabitants of that apartment turned DJ and flipped open his Mac to dish out tunes to an already mellow gathering.

The first song that he played was 'Aankhon Kay Saagar' by Ali Zafar. It was a soulful rendering of heartwarming lyrics with the score to match. No razzmatazz, no gimmicks, just pure music. It altered the state of the room from hazy to wispy. Each listener hanging by the tendrils of Ali Zafar's voice dishing out his best.

Much to the room's delight the next song was Garaj Baras, a mash of Ali Azmat and Rahat Fateh Ali Khan that rocked my boots of my feet, as the expression goes. What was outstanding was Rahat during his solo piece within that number. Pure bliss.

The room was looking forward to more of this epic session of music that was transcending tastes, genres, and borders. It felt like music close to home.

At the end of the evening I was looking out for more of this. Coke Studio Pakistan was my music mecca. I visited the site ever so often and with them providing downloads to all their sessions then, I had Coke Studio music on my music player and computer every single day.

A year and over later I heard Coke Studio coming to India. I was looking forward to this like a junkie waiting for his next fix. Much to my dismay, my work kept me away from Episode 1 of the desi version. But the moment I could I logged on to the site to listen to what we could muster up against the greats that benchmarked this amazing initiative I did.

And I was crestfallen.

From the multitude of talent we have to showcase all we could come up is a fusion of music that made little sense to me. There was little of the mellow stuff that one could curl up in the den and listen to over a glass of evening spirits. This was more of the rapchik, dhinchak music that has been popularized in the auto-rickshaws of the country. The music was very jhankar type.

Aghast, I tried to listen to more to perhaps clear my initial confusion. This did not truly help the situation. Other than Tochi Raina there was nothing spectacular to write about or hear a second time. The stalwarts like Kailash Kher and Shaan paled in comparison to their counterparts across the LoC. As a female artiste I love Sunidhi Chauhan, but she too was not a shadow on the renderings of Zeb & Haniya. A classical qawwali like 'Chadhta Sooraj' could not capture my attention like the one done by the original Sabri Brothers. The only exception was Harshdeep Kaur with 'Hoo'. It was more on the lines of the Sufi greats.

What went wrong is that we have too much to showcase and we tried to mulch it all up. Instead of short but determined steps we took long unwarranted strides to compare, compete, and collaborate when we needed to KISS (Keep It Simple Silly) and make up. But maybe I am reading this all wrong. If we did want to showcase the talent across the length and breath of the country in a single offering this could be it. Do I want to listen to it repeatedly? No!

IMHO, Not all is lost. This is in fact the first year of our attempt at this platform. So there is time to amend our disastrous ways. As the adage goes, 'he who get's it right the first time over never learnt anything'. We will improve.

Till then, Coke Studion India, I switch over to Pepsi!

A Dog's Life It Is...

Have you ever wondered why the statement ‘it’s a dog’s life’?

It must have started in the centuries past, where man and dog co-existed and hunted together, dog doing all the toiling and man just going in for the kill and could have meant working oneself out over little gains. But things are fast a-changing.

Today, in the urban lifestyle, a dog is the king of the crib. Ask me, or better still, ask Apache!

Apache is my Belgian Shepherd dog, jet black coat with a white scarf patch, six hind toes, and brown eyes that seem to soften the grim look he would have had they been the color of his coat. But that is not the best thing about Apache. It is his incredible ability to deter strangers through a guerilla tactic of hug and lick that deter even the most patient dog lovers and would be miscreants. More likely his ‘licks can kill’.

But let me not boast of Apache’s handsome demeanor. This blog is about my envy of his life. A dog’s life. And I want it!

Apache’s day begins sharp at half past whenever he wants to wake up. His wake up yawn is followed up with a few full body stretches that gets him ready for the next item on the agenda – become an alarm clock.

Apache has distinct ways to wake up each person at home. Me, he will wake up by licking my hand and letting me know it’s time to wake up and wash my hands before I touch anything! The rest are woken up by his gentle prancing across the home bundled with some non-stop clicketty-click footwork. Once all of us are up, the day begins at home.

Having completed mission wakey wakey, Apache’s next order of business is a visit to the trenches. Cadet ‘Patch is well trained to soil only where the soil can absorb and reuse. The morning ablutions are combined with his morning walk, an hour long with gentle pauses of catnip salad and ritual territorial markings.

There are those rare days when this leisurely walk is disturbed by stray canine hooligans who are dealt with severe barks, growls, and more territorial markings that would cause the Nile to dry up. The return walk back home is sprinkled with some gazelle-like bounding and hunter stalk and ambush with my shoes while I am wearing them. Seems I wear them out way to soon and it could be attributed to the Peter Pan of dogs.

Once home after the morning walk, Apache tanks up on water and chows down on a breakfast of pet-food or gourmet dog food prepared especially for him. A good breakfast meal is a heavy meal that straight up leads to a snooze.

Nap times are long and languid hours of nothingness punctuated with barks, scratches, and a few gulps from the fountain of the thirst busters. This is followed by longer naps and more of those distractions.

By midday the haze of laze subsides with a want of activity. A passerby, some chirping birds, joyous shouts of children playing, or even a breeze of wind that rustles the leaves is adequate to rouse curiosity. And that piqued inquisitivity is sated with some relentless barking and quick-pawed rounds around the house.

If it’s the children that caused this activity, it is further fueled by an exchange of canine talk between the children and Apache. I wonder what is it that the children communicate with him but he seems happy to be able to voice back to them in response to their initial discussion point.

Some more sleep followed with a treat of chewies (those doggie treats that act as supplements and seem to taste good as per Apache).

By the time it’s 6ish in the evening, it’s time for the evening walk. As all walks, this one too is greeted with some excitement and impatience. Every time the leash is brought to his collar, Apache responds by trying to chase his tail. I have no idea whether he wants the leash to be tied to his collar or his tail! Nonetheless, leash secured, we begin our eveninger. A walk by the sunset. A walk by folks returning home. A walk by the mornings poop stop. Stinky doobidy doo.

On the return, there is some chase the legs game. Apache tries to stalk and hunt my legs while I try to hurdle over his attempts. This is his favorite game and he can go through hours of this if he gets his way.

Back home, after that bit of exercise and activity, a bowl filled with water quenches his thirst while a dinner or soup with bones, meat, rice, and mashed veggies greets his pallet appetizingly. With speed and dexterity the meat is identified and savaged upon. Then come the bones alternated with the broth. Finally the rice and veggies go in grudgingly. And then burrrrp!

He is happy the day went well. Now time can be spent lying down while we watch television, unless there is meat for our meal tantalizing him to want some more. The day ends with the cliketty-click of paws heading back towards the bedroom where he occupies his favorite spot to sleep on, the floor rug. With a yawn and a scratch, sleep is welcomed. The eyes gradually blink out into dream state with yips and nips in response to the fun he has with his eyes closed and mind wandering.

So what is a day in the life of Apache? Wake up, clean up, eat up, sleep, bark and make a point heard, eat some more, more sleep, play and clean up, eat, and then drift back to sleep.

If that’s a dog’s life; give it all to me. I bow wow to it!