The lost case

I've been piling up a lot of frustration over the last three days, but I've been unusually calm. It's actually not a good sign. I felt terrified about when I was going to explode, who was going to face the slack and how badly it was going to end. I say a simple prayer everyday. "God, please give me the patience to control the urge of punching someone today. I don't think I have it in me to take a return blow." So, blogging about it seemed to be the best idea. I was getting my head around a nice and subtle way to put it out there, which surprisingly was taking my mind off the frustration. But, now, I'm not going to write about that, because I woke up this morning and the first thing I read was: Andhra court issues warrant against MSD. It stumped everything else out of priority.

Disclaimer: I'm obviously going to write totally against it, so, if you are not going to like it, please exit now and we can avoid a war of words later. 

Answers to FAIQs (Frequent Asked Irritating Questions):

1. Yes, I'm such a huge fan/admirer of Dhoni and that has nothing to do about my feelings here. Even if Gambhir/Yuvraj (my least favorite players from the WC winning squad) were in this position, I'd be totally against it. Maybe if it was Nehra/Munaf Patel, I'd still be against it, but, I'm sure I would've had a bit of a laugh too.

2. I belong to the same allegedly 'denigrated' religion in discussion here and I'm a staunch believer in God. But, NO, I don't feel that my religious sentiments are protected one bit more than the way it was before this complaint was filed.

3. No, I will not 'unfriend' you on FB even if we did argue over this. We probably just don't agree about this. It's fine with me.

4. I shared the 'The Hindu' version of this article because I didn't want to hurt the religious sentiment of my blog. Content is the religion of a blog.

To me, the first most disturbing thing about this news was that when more than 50% of the population don't even have time to read Business Today, there was one guy, who (1) saw this, (2) noticed the Reebok shoe among the many other things, (3) connected it to the prospect of handing God a shoe (the brand probably bothered him - Nike/Adidas fan?) (4) got his religious sentiments fatakkk-thattaak broken (Awwww!), (5) took time and effort to file a case (and money - mostly funded, because the character profile doesn't seem the spending-from-pocket type) and (6) the worst of all - DID NOT get thrown out of court. This last point, to me, is most frustrating.

Frankly, I want to file a few law suits too.

Did Dhoni really wear make-up and pose for Business Today or was it just a Photoshop thing? It kind of feels a bit of a let down if he did. My religious sentiments got a tad hurt. Well, cricket is kind of a religion, isn't it?

Suit 1: If he did, as a cricket fan, I want to sue him for wasting time instead of spending that time training for England.

Religious (cricket) sentiments: 1, Indian Cricket: 0

This news piece has got some media publicity because a celebrity (one of the top most) is involved. But, I'm sure there are so many cases like this one which puts so many innocent victims through a lot of pain and stress. People accused of rape will not be punished severely (because that's inhuman - rape is not), people who face massive corruption charges are released on bail and their arrival is celebrated as if they went to jail for freedom struggle (point to re-note here is that they were only released on bail, not cleared of the charges - ha ha, who am I kidding?) and they contest elections, people facing murder charges are in the VIP ward of a top hospital (heart attack - as usual to the rescue), thousands of such cases pending and this suit WAS NOT thrown out of court. Ah!

Suit 2: I want to sue the judicial system itself for spending the tax payers' money for this. Trust me, if they send force to England to bring him down here, I'm seriously considering it. 

Religious sentiments: 1, Judicial System: 0

So, who is this guy? Why does he take it for granted that he is the moral police of my religious beliefs. Who made him my religious sentiment hurt-level monitor? My religion is the probably one of my most personal business and why does he get to decide? And this suit WAS NOT thrown out of court.

Suit 3: I want to sue this guy who filed the law suit in the first place, because he has made it clear that the God I believe to be most supreme can become impure or whatever because he was handed a shoe. And that bloody, hurts my religious sentiments more than anything else. 

Religious Sentiments: 1, Common Sense: 0

When I mentioned this to a colleague today, the first thing he said was, "Didn't a pair of slippers rule Ayodhya (the biggest pain point  for over 2 decades in the country, in terms of religious sentiments) for 14 years?". And this suit WAS NOT thrown out of court. 

Suit 4: Issue arrest warrant to Sage Valmiki who conceived the Ramayana (or track the current living descendant) to clarify what happened there.

Religious Sentiments: 1, Actual Religious Values: 0

And this coming from an Andhra court. Isn't NTR literally considered as Lord Krishna himself? And, this suit WAS NOT thrown out of court.

Suit 5: I want to sue all those who used to perform prayers/arthi in the theatre, when NTR came on screen dressed as Krishna. I won't sue NTR, he undoubtedly pulled off the best on-screen Krishna appearances ever.

Religious Sentiments: 1, Ground Reality: 0

So, if slippers and shoes are such impure things, why don't you walk around without that? In the summer heat of Guntur, you can't afford that because your feet will turn in to pulp. So, you are degrading, no, denigrating shoes which actually feed lakhs of people who belong to the industry.

Suit 6: On behalf of everyone in the shoe making industry - Denigration, it is.

Religious Sentiments: 1, Self Respect: 0

But, what will we do? We have work to do. I have a release tomorrow and I'm writing this post instead of sleeping, only because I have to wait until QA signs off. We will worry about it when it happens to us. We will write blogs. We will post on FB. We will sit at home, in front of the idiot box, enjoy the game and complain that India doesn't play well overseas. We, are the Common Man. 

Suit 7: This lifestyle 'suits' me. Let me enjoy it, while I can.

Religious Sentiments: 1, Common Man: 0

If everyone starts suing for crap that gets printed on the media, TOI would be facing so many law suits that it will have to borrow some space from CNN-IBN to store some of the paper work. Dhoni is obviously not going to jail. But, some idiot down the line is going to keep filing law suits, because he got his psoriasis treated, but the habit of scratching something all the time stuck. A politician quips against severe punishment for rape that 'Boys will be Boys'. We will not sue him, because we are looking for a ticket in to the parliament and not out of it, right?

I'm halting there - abruptly. Not because I don't have anything more to say, but because the moment I decided that my prospects of surviving existed outside the peninsula, I lost my right to complain. All I can do is let out my frustration in the form a few sarcastic quotes. Once in a while, that NRI guilt creeps from the corner of the heart, whose existence I never knew of. 

And then, days like today happen. 

Independence Day 2011

So, last week I was thinking what's special this Independence day. First, I thought "Wow! Maybe India will throttle England the previous evening at Birmingham". Well, lets not talk about it. Then I thought maybe I'd press Dad for a drive to Pondicherry. Yeah! I'm getting too optimistic these days. After some stupid ideas here and there, I found myself in front of my TV on Thursday night when Aarakshan (the movie) and its ban was making headlines everywhere. I irresistibly wanted to see the movie asap and thanks to Santosh for cancelling his trip to Coimbatore, we caught it at PVR last night (Saturday). I didn't see the damn co-incidence until then. But, I have been all pumped up and energetic since then.

No, I'm not going to review the movie. However, as a nation we need to stand up and applaud Prakash Jha's guts to have touched an issue as sensitive as reservation (reejerwaysun as the guy sitting next to us pronounced it when we asked him the meaning of aarakshan). You'd be disappointed as I was, if you thought the movie is about taking the side of a specific so called (under/over/beneath/upper/super-over/deep-under/whatever) privileged section of the Indian society. I don't blame him because as a sincere filmmaker he has come up with an unbiased screenplay. He has tried to bring about a balance and left it there, for us to make the judgement. In a nutshell, whichever category/view-point you belong/support, you'd not feel left down.

As every Indian citizen (who never believes in a balance), I had my reservations against reservation. Any student/parent who have sat through the Anna university Engineering admission counselling center would have that anger (when the green mark against your preferred seat becomes red and you are still outside). Thanks to the deemed (read as your-money-is-doomed) university concept, I was exempted of that tension. I haven't put much effort for my boards and its fair to say that I have had my share of luck when it came to all those phases of my life. However, what my sister went through during her counselling (poor thing - a shot so sincere as hers deserved better) was unacceptable to me. Well, no regrets now. She has found her way out and in style.

Ask me and I'll blame it on our rich but biased tradition. Call me non/un/fun Indian but I'm not going to take that back. I believe in Satyameva Jayathe and Athithi Devobhava as much I detest the difference that our culture has created. What the hell are we supposed to do? Our ancestors came up with a profession based caste/class system. Well, it suited them and that time period. Even then, only a person well-trained and fit for the job did it. After hundreds of years, how many millions of people have moved out of their ancestral profession? But, why do we still have this caste system that rooted in profession? And why this class system that rooted in caste? Thank God that there was no IT (profession/caste) back then. Man! We (IT people) wouldn't even have water to drink today.

Coming back, yeah, I have always asked, "Why 50%? Give 100%". Whatever I knew but would never accept, hit me hard about how true it is after seeing the movie. One set of ancestors are literate. Another set is not. One set is hard-working. Another just knows to boss around. So, reservation actually came into place to set a common platform. But how successful was that?

It was pretty successful for all, except for those it was meant to help. The politician transformed poor dalit leader (not anyone specific) who loudly voiced (BRAVO!!!) against untouchability, caste-ism, racism etc, and even went for jail to get reservation to be implemented, is fine. His children are rich. His grandchildren were born with a silver spoon. He goes to the US for treatment even if all he has is diarrhea. He gets a personal VIP darshan in Tirupathi. He is corrupt to the core and when arrested/questioned, he will claim that he is being targeted because of his caste.

What happened to the people he raised his voice for? They were listening to him and praising him back then. They were really anticipating him to bring about a big transformation in the system. That he did. They expected their lives to change. That he didn't let. For him, they have to stay the same today and they obediently have.

Media. I'm not sure if they toss up a coin before covering a story, to decide their stand. They research. They run around. They analyze. They question. They answer. They cover. They uncover. Only thing. If they do any of the above abiding by the laws of democracy and journalism, and not for their TRP rating, it makes lot of sense. Someone supports reservation, they make it an issue. Someone talks against reservation, they make it an issue. Someone makes a movie about reservation, they make it an issue. It was far better when media said issue and it only meant the day's issue of the newspaper.

Reiterating that our rich culture has nothing but created divide among us, the only thing we will ever be united about is being different. Its like my workplace. Testers and Developers hate each other and keep fighting until the management announces Q4 results and say, "No Incentives this year". If they show the unity of voicing (silent enough that no one will hear) against the management, in their work, the product will be light years ahead in terms of quality. This difference exists from education to matrimonial.

Religion, Caste, Sub-caste, Super-Sub class, Sect, Language, Star and the horoscope. If only all these match, the guy or girl is qualified for judgement as the actual match. Don't even get me started on horoscope. To my knowledge, if the positioning of the celestial bodies at the time of your child's birth matters so much, all you have to do is to DO IT at the right time after calculations and predictions. If that catches up, all astronomical towers will be full of father-in-laws and mother-in-laws. What if every child starts blaming his/her parents for why their horoscope doesn't match with what they want to do in life?

Again, we are going way away from the topic. My point is that as long as these differences exist, someone is benefited. Simple example. There is a saying in Tamil that roughly translates to, "If the town is split, the clown makes merry". He gets double the chances to perform and it doubles his income. Thus, this split that was accidentally created among us benefits a whole lot of people who will do anything to keep it that way. And the vote bank turned reservation system will remain like that forever.

It sounds very simple and bad-ass annoying when I say that I look at Independence this way. The bigger picture. If the British were still ruling us, the only division in this country probably by now would have been them and us. :)

But, that's just a stupid thought. I'm still one among the proudest of Indians in Independent India. On this day, having blurted out so much and having let out my boohoos, I salute all those great people who spilled sweat and blood to win us the India that we have for ourselves to ru(i)n. I wish all of you a very Happy Independence Day!

For a change, lets try practicing it.