Have stomach-ache? Dial P for POLICE!

This seems to be the latest trend these days.Anything that goes wrong in our society is because the Police department was inactive,inefficient or plain Dumb!

So what if the husband was beating up his wife in the middle of the night?Where was the Police?So what if a young student committed suicide because he had not performed well in his exams?What was the police doing?So what if your locality isn't getting water supply?So what if couples are found romancing in parks? Gosh! Will someone call up the Police?

Recently,the police department was again under the scanner because of their dismal performance in the Aarushi Talwar murder case.Don't worry,I wont bore you guys with those muddled up details.Neither am I taking any one's side.But can we not,for a second,stop judging these guys (and gals too!) and think that they are human beings too?That even they have their moments of weaknesses?That we simply cant expect them to play the Super-cops every time?And that,when they do play the super-cops we stop and take notice!

Recently,a boat carrying 66 policemen was attacked by the Naxalites and it capsized and around 38 men are still missing.And the news was lost somewhere in the debris of the Indo-U.S nuclear deal.The nation did not even stop to mourn the loss of those valiant soldiers.Where was the time?

But then these policemen did not have some sort of personal grudge against the Naxalites.Most of us aren't even aware of the miserable conditions some of these policemen live in.Most of the police chowkis lack even the basic facilities like proper toilets.But what these social activists look for in these chowkis is that the prisoners dont have proper toilet facilities.Ha! The conditions worsen as one moves towards the BIMARU states.Can you imagine IPS officers travelling 20 Kms. on foot for the fear of landmines because they do not have landmine detector vehicles with them?Where as their naxal friends chalk out their programmes on laptops!Well,I could go on and on with this.But I don't think my one post will make any huge difference in the attitude of the people around.

This Post goes out as a tribute to those missing policemen and their grieving families.

'B' Bole To...

I have always been baffled whenever people play the regionalism card.It's all so very confusing.You can call it my naivety but werent we,as kids,told that the only region we should care about was India? And,that too,for the plain fact that the rest of them would require a passport and a visa? :)
Maybe,that was the reason when I left U.P. and went to Bihar,where my dad was posted,I could not understand it at first.People told me,I didn't look like I was from U.P.! Then again I left Bihar and went to Delhi and people told me that I didn't look like I was from Bihar.And likewise,I have been to many places where they have told me the same thing.So,I finally decided to ask them whatever on earth that meant.And pat came the reply-"People from your part of the world are known to have typical accent,they dress conservatively and are typical villagers.You,surprisingly seem to have none of it." I really didn't know what to say!Maybe,that was the reason I was never subjected to the kind of seclusion and embarrassment that other students from Bihar and Jharkhand suffer from.In fact,these people justified my presence in their "group" by claiming that I wasn't originally a "Bihari" and it was only because my dad was posted there!
But,I have never hidden the fact that I have spent a major part of my lifetime in Bihar and that,come what may,I trully love this place.And trust me,it's not that blind love that other people have when they promote regionalism.I owe a lot of "myself" to Bihar.I may not be the best of the best people you come across,but I certainly know that if I have been able to retain a major part of my goodness that I had come with in this world,it's because of this place.And this is because even though this place is so poor,you find people hoping for better things and not giving in to the feeling of despair.You get to see some of those very raw emotions,very basic feelings in this part of the world.You know that life has got to become better and better from here.It's a fight for survival here.Maybe,that's why when the biharis go to other places,they stick close to each other.The amount of unity that you witness in a bihari group cannot be found anywhere else.
And even though,Bihar is one of the most backward and illiterate states in India,I say this with utmost pride that the quality of schooling that you can find here cannot be found anywhere else.It has some of the best and top-ranking I.C.S.E. schools in India which form the backbone of that system which produces the highest number of I.A.S,I.P.S,Engineers,Doctors and Lecturers in the country.And trust me,they have all been contributing in the success of this country.When a Bihari enters "your" state or region,he invests in money that contribute to your progress.He's not eating from your profits.Rather,he's bringing you the necessary money that's needed to keep your system running.
A Delhi University or a Pune University didn't become what they are overnight.It has taken them years.And the Biharis have their fair share of contribution in it.Bihar had developed a lot earlier than the other regions and it was the place that gave the world the concept about city,municipal corporations and international affairs.That circle will complete again.Bihar will rise again.
But still,if you feel they are snatching away whatever is yours then throw them out.They will still find someplace where they can prosper.But make sure,you dont have to repent the way Maharashtra Govt. is doing!

B-I-L-K-I-S-E-D !!

When asked by Barkha Dutt-"Kya aapko lagta hai ki aapko nyay mila hai?",pat comes the reply-"Nyay mila hai lekin mujhe unn policewalon ke chhot jane ka gham hai.Main ladoongi.Chhodoongi nahin."

It's been six years since the Bilkis Bano case came to light for the first time in 2002.The entire nation was shocked to see Inhumanity reaching new heights.14 people of a single family were killed including Bilkis's little daughter,Bilkis herself was raped when she was pregnant at that time.But slowly,we all forgot.Bilkis Bano's case became another heinous crime in that long list which shoot to glory instantly and remain there until next heinous crime comes!

How do we live in this nation where public memory is so short,where the very definition of the word 'Heinous' is changed every minute? How do we justify the rape of a pregnant woman? The killings of 14 members of a single family? The refusal of the police department to register the case? The re-election of same government that was accused of being insensitive to the interests of a certain minority group? How do we justify our very existence in this nation?

The Modi government has accused Bilkis of sensitizing the whole issue.What I ask is,How does a woman sensitize her own rape?
Bilkis Bano has truly become a role model for those many other muslim women who are fighting for their rights.Her Never-Say-Die attitude is an inspiration for all of them.When this case came to limelight for the first time,this woman did not even know how to speak hindi.And now,look at her!

What so many people still don't know is that all those 14 people,men and women alike,were "RAPED" before being killed.And killed,they were,by huge rocks.That when the police buried their bodies,they threw salt on them so that noone could find even their bones.And still,the court said,this wasnt the "rarest of the rare" cases!

A special mention of Bilkis's husband Yaqoob.Move over all those Alpha n Retro males-they are good for nothing! Here is a man,who not only accepts her woman after she was raped,he even fights her battle! He claims that he knows only as much about his wife's rape as the rest of world coz he has never discussed it with her.
This is what I call a Man of Substance!

Today,if Bilkis has moved on from being a mere name to a phenomenon,it's truly because her exceptional courage,determination and not to forget a truly exceptional Husband!

The Brave New World of Blogs

Yeah! This was the topic of discussion this week in Barkha Dutt's show "We,The People".
People expressed various opinions on the topic.Some said that blogs have given them the freedom to express their opinions on a global platform and get feedbacks from people.How could we ever forget how blogs helped us get an insight into what was happening in Myanamar and more recently,in Pakistan!
For some it was a means of expressing their long bottled desire of writing something.While earlier,unless you were a really talented writer,you had to wait for a publisher to approve your work and bring it out in the market and then only you could find out what others thought about your work! Now,it's just a matter of few seconds before people can leave in comments in ur blog about your work.

While there were other people who quite did not agree w/ the idea of sharing their personal life with unknown people[me being one of them!]

Some did express concerns about the lack of regulations in a blog.They felt there should have been more safety measures to regulate the blog.Well,I won't be able to elaborate this point coz just then there was a power cut! (My Bihar,ofcourse!)

I feel,for me blogs have been a wonderful means of discovering myself.I started writing blogs when I was into a very difficult phase of my life and blog became an easy medium of venting out all my feelings.
I had always known I could write,but I had no way knowing how good or how bad! Blogging gave me an idea about this! Moreover,I had never known I could ever write a poem in English.But I suddenly found myself trying out new things.

Today,if I believe in the power of my Pen (how cliched!),I owe it to my Blog!

Thank You!

Down and Under!

The controversies simply never fail to raise our eyebrows when it comes to a cricket series played Down Under! The series between India and Australia has just begun and once again,they are the controversies that are filling up the Sports pages[Front pages,in India’s case!] of newspapers!
It was only the second test match and the Indian team recovered remarkably from that horrific first test to perform,if not better,then atleast at par with the Aussies.But then,you can never trust the Aussies to play fair.Since they had realized that they had no chance of winning by playing fair,they did all that was in their might.From blaming Harbhajan for making racial comments to Ponting playing the umpire on the field by ruling Ganguly out,they did almost everything.
What I fail to understand is that is a nation so obsessed with winning that it has lost its sense of right and wrong? Was making a world record of 16 successive victories in test cricket so important that players forgot the rules as well as the code of conduct?
They say,Bhajji made a racial slur at Symonds by calling him a “big monkey”.I say,what did a certain Aussie umpire do when he referred to the entire Indian team as “you Blacks” and later on clarified that he had said “you blokes”?!And even now,when Hogg has referred to Kumble and Dhoni as "bastards".I suppose,"bastard" is much more offensive than "monkey"?!
12 wrong decisions against a single team in a single test match is not a joke.And still it's not for the first time.I don’t think any cricket fan will ever forget the infamous “shoulder before wicket” decision against Sachin.Well,that decision had also come Australia!
I feel it's about time we refused to let people to take us for granted.And,for the richest Cricket board,it,certainly is not difficult.I do not say that the team should refuse to play the rest of the series.But then,let the team register its protest.Let the team play the series under protest.

Bhutto and Pakistan

I write this post in the wake of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.The news has come as a huge shock to almost anyone who had even the slightest knowledge of Pakistan's politics.The repercussions of her death shall be felt far and wide.And by saying that I only mean that Bhutto in death has done what she could only dream about doing in her lifetime.

In the midst of absolute confusion,bloodshed,blasts etc,democracy suddenly has lost the centrestage again! In all likelihood,Musharraf will become the head of the state with Army playing a major role and America backing him.It is such a hopeless condition for the people of Pakistan that they have no role to play in choosing a leader who should govern them.
And I believe that almost everyone is responsible for this in parts.America,for playing a major role in Pakistan's politics without actually thinking about their(Pakistan's) real interests.The successive Governments in Pakistan whose sole motive was to disturb Kashmir.The press and Media that could never overcome the pressures of the Government.And,the people of Pakistan themselves,who,in all these 60 years of Independence,could never stand up for their rights.
All these years while Pakistan was busy spreading violence and funding terror in its neighbourhood,conditions kept on worsening for its own people.With such a troubled history of politics,things look bleaker than ever before.With Bhutto gone and Nawaz Sharif barred from contesting the elections,it's Musharraf and his men all the way!
Well,it's about time,people of Pakistan woke up and fought for their rights.
And,I,as their neighbour could only feel saddened by the current state of affairs and feel grateful at the same time that at least in India,we have a democracy,a highly watchful media and a "more aware than not" population!

Tharoor Speaks!

This article by Shashi Tharoor appeared in The Hindu on December 9.I must admit that I am a bit partial towards him,but that should not stop you from appreciating this article.For long I had been thinking about posting something women-oriented but could not decide on what to write [So,many things,you know!!] and then read it in the Magazine section of Hindu.Needless to say,i loved it!Right words and well written,Mr. Tharoor!! :)

Post-modern malls and medieval mind-sets

In spite of prosperity and education, violence against women continues to thrive in our midst.
I write these words two Sundays before they are to be published, on what is known (but infrequently noticed) as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which falls on November 25 every year, but tends to receive less pres s attention than World Anti-Obesity Day the next day. When this column appears, only two days will remain of a worldwide campaign for “16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence”, an international campaign organised by women’s NGOs since 1991. But it doesn’t really matter how many days of activism remain — two days will not be enough, nor will 365. It is one of the most shameful aspects of human civilisation that we have entered the 21st century having failed to end a practice that has already blighted the other 20 — the practice of using violence against women.

And the practice remains widespread. Men are, of course, physically stronger than women, so the one thing they can usually do is to impose themselves violently on the weaker sex. Wife-beating may not be as common as it used to be, but it persists nonetheless: many a bruise that a woman, out of pride, tries to pass off as the result of a household accident has in fact been caused by a man. But that is not the only form of violence perpetrated against women: the widespread use of female genital mutilation, especially in conservative Islamic communities in Africa, with young girls forced by a combination of culture and coercion into having their clitoris amputated, often with lasting pain as a result, is another example.
Widely prevalent

Worse still is the persistence, in parts of Latin America and much of the Islamic world, of what is euphemistically called “honour killing”. This is the ultimate retribution imposed by men on women whose actions are deemed to have besmirched the family’s honour — the exaction of capital punishment, often for “crimes” like choosing to marry a man from another community. Not a single year has gone by in our century without several reports of such killings, and God knows how many unreported ones. Strikingly, honour killings have even occurred this year in England and Italy, committed by Muslim immigrants from Pakistan and Turkey, respectively, who killed their own daughters and sisters for having too readily adopted the sexual mores of the countries into which their parents had chosen to immigrate.
But this does not mean that Indians, including non-Muslims, have anything to be complacent about. We may not conduct forced amputations of clitorises in our country, but in parts of India we still worship women who have, often under intolerable pressure, cast themselves on the funeral pyres of their dead husbands. We have the uniquely Indian practice of burning brides whose parents have not paid as much dowry as expected. And our more prosperous northern States have so extensively developed the practice of aborting female foetuses, once identified in the womb, that we have an odd statistical disparity in both Punjab and Haryana, of more than 11 men for every 10 women. The missing women are those who have faced the ultimate act of gender violence — pre-emptive murder for the mere fact of having been conceived female.
No exceptions

If Punjab and Haryana demonstrate that prosperity is no guarantor of enlightenment — that it is possible for a medieval mindset to flourish amidst post-modern shopping malls — Kerala, sadly, has begun to prove that even education does not necessarily breed decency toward women. I write this with deep regret, having often, in these columns, celebrated the empowerment of Kerala’s women (and been put right on the subject by Keralite women who know better.) But it is now widely reported that violence against women is rising in Kerala — some figures show a 300 per cent increase. Kerala’s women are educated, and so are their men, but women still do not escape the iron law of social conformism, and many have driven up the State’s suicide rates to record levels. The large number of Keralite men working in West Asia, separated from their families and imbibing from their new surroundings a traditionalist attitude towards women, does not help; they often return home unprepared to deal with the expectations of the educated women they have left behind, and when clashes occur, the resort to violence is all too common. If violence against women is on the rise in educated Kerala, then we have a national problem that policy-makers cannot afford to ignore. Every time a woman is the victim of violence anywhere in our country, each Indian is diminished.

Raising awareness

What can we do about it? Talking about it in The Hindu is a start, but hardly enough. Awareness of the problem must be increased, especially amongst those who don’t read liberal and enlightened newspapers and may not even be conscious that they have the right to reject and resist violence. Education could be part of the answer, but (as Kerala has shown) education isn’t enough — and in places like Bihar, where only 27 per cent of women are literate, education won’t reach enough people. What is needed is social change, and that comes painfully slowly in our country. A national campaign to shame every man who assaults a woman might be one way — of using the mass media to change the masses. There’s a challenge to the more public-spirited of our PR and advertising gurus. Are they man enough to take it on?