EK CUP CHAI

It has been a while I wrote something here. But today something happened, something really shameful.

Tasleema Nasreen, the author of Lajja has been taking shelter in different countries after a ‘Fatwa’ was issued against her for writing Lajja which brought out the shameful acts of people in the name of Islam. Recently she shifted to Kolkata, very near to her homeland, Bangladesh, just to have the feel of her home. Kolkata is a place where they talk Bengali, like they do in most of Bangladesh. She thanked India for letting her live very close to her homeland. HOMELAND! Huh.

She was in Hyderabad, the city of Tehzeeb, to release her new books. Tehzeeb is an Urdu word for ‘cultured’. Actually cultured doesn’t really explain the complete meaning of Tehzeeb. That’s the richness, the language that belongs to thousands of Muslims who live here. Unfortunately, Hyderabad’s representatives didn’t live upto the name! And when I say representatives, I mean those who got elected by the people!

Three MLAs of MIM, an out and out Muslim political party, not only disturbed the book release, they hit Tasleema Nasreen, the guest of India, with whatever they could. They shouted slogans against her, someone issued another Fatwa against her. I wouldn’t have minded if it were stupid religious fanatics. They were MLAs, representatives of people and democracy of India. What a shameful act it was to see the news with one of the MLAs actually lifting a Chair to hit Tasleema.

They have been arrested, and soon will be released. Just for your information, a bomb was blasted in Hyderabad. It was said to be planted by Muslims in order to kill Muslims, so that there would communal riots. The plot failed, and Muslims who understood the plot lashed their anger on MLAs of MIM, who were there to show fake support to the already hurt people. Today’s act not only gives these MLAs huge respect from the society of Muslims, but they have earned their name back. Nothing will happen to them. It will be the usual thing. News media will cry foul, interviews of Tasleema will be taken. And soon all will be forgotten in the name of Celebrating 61st Independence Day of India.

Wow…what a great example this incident(?) is to portray true Independent India. It shows the truth.A truth that puts our heads to shame…what is the meaning of shame…Lajja…(ha ha ha…how ironic).

And for Tasleema Nasreen, what can I say. It will be another page of being scorned for saying the truth about the darkside of religious fanaticism. People tell me that religion is a way of leading a life, and that incidents like these are because of people not because of religion. They tell me that religion is not created by human beings but by God. Huh…I just wonder if human beings can be violent…cant religion in itself be violent! But who cares about all this stuff.
Remember, the last article on ekcupchai was when the Cause had attacked last time. This time it just caused another wound. We will only try to solve the wounds here…not the cause behind it. We will say a huge sorry to Tasleema and also see to it that the MLAs are released. All wounds will be healed, until the cause strikes back, and it will strike back reminding us of acts of shame!

Thanks to media, somewhere from 100 miles people called me to check if I were safe, and to run away if I was anywhere near the old city. Reason! There is a bomb blast at a Mosque, in the praying yard, on a Friday, when thousands of people gather to offer their prayers.

When I mentioned it to a friend, I didn’t realize that I had no feeling of surprise or shock. Just plain passing of news. Somebody (whom I don’t even know) made a comment: how can a bomb blast happen in a mosque, after all they are the ones who do it. Will they kill their own people. I got irritated. I replied, “most naxalites are Hindus sir!”

From a bomb blast, the topic suddenly went off to religion. And as I went home, I saw the city - Hyderabad the ever developing city with loads of traffic, with loads of things to be seen… looking dull. News media said one side of it was supposed to be full of traffic jams as people went haywires - buses were burnt, shops and ATM centers broken.

And then, I was on the other side of this city. Where there were no traffic jams at places you expect them. There were no irate public and no signs of mayhem. There was this calm in the way people walked, drove. Everyone was escaping, laughing nervously (or was it my feeling). Was it fear? I do not know.

Later, before I slept and after I woke today, I was wondering, what is it that religions today have been demanding from us? Isn’t it feasr of something that we don’t understand (or something that we don’t want to understand?) Or probably it is not religions but people who follow the religions. Wait a minute I’m trying to be safe here.
Krishna’s ‘Bhagvad Gita’ says that we are just players in the game of Nature. Qoran says people from any other religion are outsiders! Bible, I’m not sure of, and for Sikhs a sword is an important asset.

It is as if, we all have nothing to do with what we are doing, and yet we are asked to be aware of outsiders, of how to beat them and with stories that say that we all are sinners. Excuse me! What is wrong with these religions. Why do they instill fear, insecurity, violence into our minds? Or is the term ‘religion’ an escape from our reality - like bollywood cinema or things like that.

I will never know. I’m not an atheist. But somehow…I think the way we see religion will give us more bomb blasts, and more black Fridays. I’m not sure what I can do to change this. But I also ask why should do something about it?

I was born a Telugu, learned Telugu at school and then all my education pointed to me that English is just what I needed. Not that I have regrets now. But it surprises me that people talk of saving a language, ( a language like) Telugu!

Telugu, is indeed a beautiful language. Take the term ‘go dhooli vela‘. go means cows and buffaloes, dhooli = dust, vela = time. This single word tells a lot about the way telugu’s lived, around a geography of red soil. When Sun had beaten so harshly that the soil became loose..(or something like that) and when it was not yet dark, cattle returned home. As they walked, there would be dust across the village! Almost every home had a cow/buffalo, and as the shepherd(s) made sure that each of the animals went to its owners, every street ended up raking dust. And that’s when women used to start cook in the evening!

Go dhooli vela = Evening

But can preserving Telugu mean the same now. Can it return the meaning of having loose soil? Can every home have a cow or a buffalo, when milk is sold in packets and bottles with the help of co-operatives and what not? The answer is NO. Then why think of preserving a language? When a word gives the entire meaning of a culture, will that word have any importance at times of change!

Language is a only a means to communicate, isn’t it? Yes in the process of communication across centuries, some words attain specific meaning, and some don’t change at all. But every language has its own story - from having started somewhere, to being merged with various cultures,to taking and giving words, borrowing and lending cultures! And today what do you call a computer, with a language 100s of years old? So then why save a language?

Would you save ‘C’ Language if at any point of time ‘D’ comes up?

English has been able to accommodate to various technological, and cultural changes it has been able to reach to hundreds of people. But that doesn’t make any language lesser does it? A language is the sole evidence of how cultures changed and how people’s thinking changed. But trying to preserve a language is stopping the very change which nature has intended. Does preservation of languages has one aim - stop people from changing?

Today Sanskrit stands, and is spoken as the only language in a village of India. Yes, it is too small for what it was once. But then, it still stands, and will never die. No matter what! That’s the power of language. It never dies. It is only understood or isn’t.

Below are few excerpts from an interview. The interviewee had said things like:

Men and Women unity is stupidity! India will be made a 100% muslim nation! Science and Technology are not good for Civilization.

You will be shocked to see what’s in the link:

An Interview with Maulanaa Nawaabzaada Nabiullah Khan, an adviser of Jamaat-E-Islaam, a Pakistan political party!

Why is it wrong to have Gods represented in Nude? If gods were accepted as facts, then why cant it be seen that nudity is a fact. Or is nudity so strongly associated with SEX? And is sex such a heinous crime, that you want to do it, and yet hate it? Or is human being such a ghastly picture that God cannot be shown as naked human?

It is hard to decipher what is so wrong with the people who complained against Chandramohan who is supposed to have drawn obscene pictures of God at a University? Though the complaint has been lodged with the police, it would be interesting to know which kind of rules did the police use to arrest him? Interesting that  this happens in Baroda!

Did anyone forget that there are gonna be elections in Gujarat this year end! What a coincidence!

But if someone wants to discuss, throw in your comments…not just about nudity, but also about the the incident at Maharaja Sayajirao University!

The author is on a break!!!

Though I do not want to poke at where we stand, India stands in another worst list! Apart from population, AIDS patients and number of uneducated people, India is now amongst the world’s top polluters list! But this time around it has got some great friends like USA, Russia, China and Japan (this small country should start working so many hours – bad joke!).

However, the per capita pollution in India is by any means far … far from that of USA’s or Russia’s. That is the only saving part. One can understand why USA is polluted (domestic emissions including car pollution) or why Japan, Russia & China are polluted (industrial emissions). It is something of a surprise that India should accompany them in that list.

But thanks to the IT revolution and the kind of life style changes it has brought in India, pollution in India is still a factor that we need to understand fully (sorry no blaming IT revolution..but it did revolutionize the way we live). While metros and the bigger cities are obviously polluted, we need to understand why there areas that are far from these cities also polluted. (Eg: Sunderbans, Hill Stations, Beaches)

Another bigger problem for India is distributing the development of places throughout the country so as to reduce too much pollution at few places. But that means deforestation, which in itself a reason for more pollution! In order to contain deforestation, the government will need to contain population growth, which is almost impossible.

Not to forget, India along with its neighbors, by the virtue of its geographic location, has to pay for turmoil brought about by sea pollution carried out unhindered by Western countries.

But the joke is that after all the ‘development’ carried out by the various countries, suddenly a ‘developing’ country like India is asked to ‘check’ its emission. Though the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) appointed by UN wanted the world to be a better place, the timing of such a statement could be detrimental for Indian’s growth, if India has the same kind of policies.

In the end what kind of measures will India need to take to check pollution under control is going to be a huuuuge factor. Is the Indian leadership good enough to tackle such issues while most politicians are facing charges in the courts of laws?

God help India. But then in the mean time it is the common man who suffers the diseases, the farmer who suffers the losses, for whom it seems that the government is working for.

It is interesting to find that in different parts of the world, (possibly including India) people are trying to understand the thin line of difference between pornography and art. But until a full understanding comes, it is going to be yet another tale of twists and turns until the Law of India tries to define Obscenity, Pornography, Sex, Sensuality and Censorship!
Why am I saying this?

Whether it was for a piece of photo art or for a political agenda or just for fun, none of the eighteen thousand people would have expected that they would be eighteen thousand of them. For a photo shoot in Mexico Eighteen thousand people gathered in an outdoor public space, without putting a single piece of cloth on their body! (Imagine such a thing in India or Middle East of Pakistan?”)

What was surprising to hear (or rather read on news for me) was that quite a few people had said the experience of being nude in public was “liberating”.

Liberating?!

What was liberating? Encouraging the exhibitionist mentality of a photographer? Taking off clothes in public? Exhibiting body for a photo? Or did they mean that liberation comes from throwing off traditions, cultures, politics and all other feelings like ones clothes in your bedroom?

May be! May be liberation is accepting the truth, that all our traditions or cultures have for some reason covered us from seeing something beyond them.

The Government of Andhra Pradesh, India will make it compulsory for the students of Class X to attempt answering a moral science question. Wow Moral Science and one question. It has not been made clear in what subject will this question be asked.
I like this idea. It is going to be a question for students who have been prepared for hundreds of hours on how to answer questions, by teachers who have been conditioned to make their students pass exams.

But imagine how would it be, to have MLAs and MPs write Moral Science paper. Just imagine a question: What is honesty? And guess how would their answer be:

“Honesty is the best Policy. I will see to it that this Policy will be put into practice as soon as I come into power.  I have always been honest in my life. It so happened one time that  I was caught in a murder case (or trafficking case or fake encounter case or  corruption) and I made sure that the judges acquitted after 7 years of long struggle. Hence Honesty is the best policy. Honesty is power and power is honesty”

Anyways coming back to this Moral Science Question, I wonder if it is required at all. Why do these stupid policies be put into practice. The fact that our education system lacks morals is a known fact (need example..most of our leaders have studied in India only). And anyways morals do not come from answering a question in a question paper.

I wonder when our policy makers will realize it.

There is too much negativity around happening in India. Eg: The Nithari Killings, the fake encounter scam in Gujarat, the fake passports and human trafficking involving MLAs. And add to this the politics eternal cover ‘Cricket’ taking a side lane in India.

That means all news channels are covering only the bad side of India, and suddenly India ‘looks’ bad. So lets do something positive on ekcupchai.

For quite some time now I have been wondering who are the people who hold the maximum power to influence people’s lives today, and Times released its list of 100 most influential people of the world. As we all some form of bias towards someone, it is of course imperative that Times will have some Political bias. But on the whole the list contains quite a few influential people.

But what was so good to see was not just people like Oprah Winfrey, Tyra Banks being included but some one like Zen Jingyan, (a Chinese Blogger) and Lisa Randall (a professor, we could say of Physics but ‘String Theorist’).

Everyone on the list has struggled with hard work, effective work, failures and successes. But apart from those in the politics or religion, almost all of them inspire us to live a life that we all dream about. But it is these people who are in politics and religion, and their inability to distribute ‘gyaan’ to their counterparts that makes life a struggle for many.

But then, lets take the positive side of it pals. Life is Beautiful, and more so because of some of the people listed by the Times. May be we should take lot of inspiration from them and move on with life, even though sometimes life isn’t all that fair.