ARC

Life as a doctoral student sucks. It doesn’t suck in the ordinary nobody loves me suckiness (does that word even exist?) level. No, it takes sucking (pardon my vulgar language) to a different level, a level where you are the lowest form of life in the world. I mean even bacteria have more fun. They are practically immortal. They have sex almost every 20 minutes. They can live on almost anything. And they have the coolest of names. Chlamydia. Nocardia. Vibrio. Contrast that with an average doctoral student. He is a mouse (although even a mouse would be offended to be compared to such a lowly being) like creature, most often with spectacles and irritating habits like trailing off in the middle of a sentence into vague silences. Their only sex appeal lies in their detailed knowledge about how two proteins fold exactly around each other. You get the picture.

What do such specimens of the human species do when a beautiful woman goes up to them and talks? To digress a little, such events do not happen in the real world. The probability of such an event happening, according to knowledgeable sources in the Mathematics department across the road, is 0.00. In fact, apparently, this is the only known event in the world that has such a perfect probability of not happening! So let me add the rider, in a hypothetical world, to the above scenario.

Continuing with the hypothetical situation, the said graduate student will first start perspiring. His pulse will be racing because hormones are being dumped into his blood, leading to rapid changes in his metabolic profile. He starts blushing. When he opens his mouth, either no sound comes out or else mumbled and garbled words pour out, which of course do not make any sense. If that beautiful woman still has any sense she would leave. However, if she is one of those rare beings, who for some insane reason either enjoy tormenting such innocent geeks, feel pity for such lowly life forms or genuinely like disheveled and bespectacled nerds, she will stay and talk further.

What rights do a people, who have been dispossessed of their land for half a century and live in another country, have? This must be the question Tibetans must be asking themselves in the wake of Chinese premier Hu Jintao’s visit to India.

Ever since China’s brutal invasion and occupation of Tibet in 1959 India has hosted the largest community of Tibetan exiles including their spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. They have lived here for three generations and the younger members have no living memory of Tibet, except for their parents tales of it, and a nostalgic yearning for a lost homeland. Every time a Chinese official visits India the Tibetans have organized protests demanding freedom for Tibet. This time too the Tibetans geared up to greet Hu with protests and sit ins. But the Indian government took no chances and muzzled their protests. Tibetans were placed under preventive custody and those who actually protested were arrested and whisked away.

The Tibetans have a right to protest and express their grievances in public spaces. Especially since China is still continuing with its brutal occupation of Tibet and has reduced the Tibetans to a minority in their own land by encouraging Han Chinese to migrate there. Tibetan culture has been brutally suppressed in the name of development and China has arrested thousands of Tibetans.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) recently held a meeting of major Indian scientists in Bangalore to discuss the feasibility and economics of sending an Indian astronaut into space and then later landing him/her on the moon. This has given rise to the usual arguments both in favor of and against such a venture. There are those who argue that India, with her many social and economic problems, should not waste money on something that has already been done before and will yield nothing new. That instead, the money should be used to help the poor and the downtrodden. Simply put, India should not dare to dream that big and be constantly aware of her limits.

I firmly disagree. I think India should seriously plan on putting a man into space and then later on the moon. Yes, it will be expensive. However, what no one realizes is how much of a kick start it will give to the science and technology fields in India and ultimately benefit society. The space race between the erstwhile U.S.S.R. and the U.S. in the 1950s and 60s led to the development of many new technologies that later found widespread applications in many different areas, ranging from health to housing.

A petition has been filed in the Bombay High Court for banning the social networking site, Orkut, which is owned by Google, according to this report. Apparently, the petitioner, a certain Subodh Balsaraf of Thane, found that ‘Orkut’ used “slang, rude and vulgar language” about the Maratha king Shivaji. Disturbingly, Orkut has already been banned in Pune by the police after the occurrence of a few violent incidents there.

I’m surprised. Does Mr. Balsaraf or for the matter the police even know how Orkut works? Orkut by itself does not post any inflammatory remarks. It is some people who are bent on stirring things up that start these ‘hate’ communities. I even know of a few ‘Hate India’ communities started by some Pakistanis on Orkut.

There is a feature on Orkut to report about such communities to the people who run Orkut. Apparently, if enough complaints are received, steps are taken to remove that community. Now, I’m not very sure how effective this report back feature is but if you have a problem about certain people posting defamatory remarks about your idol you should first write to the people who run the site. Banning the complete site won’t help. It will only cause inconvenience to thousands of others. Orkut is actually very popular among Indians and is used by many, including myself, to keep in touch with friends and people sharing similar interests from around the world.

Another dream(s) crumbles to dust under the wheels of a spoilt brats car. Six labourers were mowed to death last night on Carter Road in Bandra by drunken louts driving a Toyota Corolla. That’s six innocent lives snuffed out by a reckless 20 year old who has daddy’s money to throw around. The dead include a pregnant woman and two children. So if you count the unborn child as a separate entity that’s seven people. As always (anyone remember the Salman Khan case?) the people at the receiving end were daily wage labourers who lived in tin sheds on the pavement on Carter Road and the killers were teenagers who had been partying at the Taj hotel till the wee hours before they embarked on their drive from hell.

So apart form the hue and cry in today’s papers (it has made front page news in ToI and IE) who will spare a thought for those killed? Life will go on as usual; People will rush about with their daily grind, People will jostle for space on the Churchgate fast local and A few anguished souls will vent their angst in the blogosphere.

Where is the humanity in this? Is this the very land where apparently tolerance is ingrained in our very blood? Is this happening in the same country where the government is bending over backwards to build nuclear bombs and lobby for a permanent seat in the Security Council when the police cannot be depended upon to protect those who need it the most? This is human nature at its darkest.

To read that the whole village, including women, stood by and watched as Surekha (45 yrs old) and her daughter Priyanka (17 years old) were beaten, mutilated, disfigured, tortured and gang-raped to death. To read that her two sons, Roshan (23 years old and blind) and Sudhir (21 years old), were beaten to death and their genitals mutilated makes me frightened to think about what is happening in the ‘other’ India. An India, where being born into a lower caste is like being cursed for life, where justice and human rights are words without any meaning, and where police and other public officials are puppets in the hands of a powerful few. This is not the ‘news’ the rest of India is fed. This is not the ‘democracy’ the high and mighty of the political elite want the world to see. This is not the ‘equality under law’ the politicians preach.

So speak out my dear friends. Talk about this on/in your blogs, phones, drawing rooms, offices, street corners, restaurants, pubs, clubs, discos, coffee joints and spread the word. Tell everyone you know about how the dreams of three youngsters and their mother were brutally erased. Talk about how the police even now ignore basic procedures and protect the perpetrators. Talk about how justice is only the preserve of a select few in today’s India. For even talking is better than being silent. For perhaps someone somewhere in the corridors of power will listen and take action.

Its finally happened. Bangalore has become Bengalooru. The Karnataka government has officially nativised the names of the capital and 10 other cities in the state. Mysore is now Mysooru, Belgaum is Bellagavi, Gulbarga is Kalburgi, Hubli is Hubbali…you get the drift. The move came on November 1, the 50th anniversary of the formation of the state of Karnataka. This means that the cities will be written the new way even in English, though this was the way they were written in Kannada.

The Kannada chauvinists have had their way, led by the Kannada Rakshana Vedike and a pack of other equally Kannada chauvinist organizations. At the root of this idiocy lies a fear that “Kannada culture” is dying. Even heavyweights like UR Anantamurthy have weighed in on the issue. I heard him the other night on NDTV saying that Bangalore has lost its Kannada moorings and there are way too many outsiders in the city. I mean, this is the guy who won a Sahitya Academy award for his book Samskara and is considered a major literary figure. I hope he sleeps easy tonight knowing that his beloved city has now regained some of its Kannada flavour.

These are the findings of the Sachar committee report which was constituted by the UPA government to find the true socio-economic condition of India’s largest minority. Muslims are at the bottom of virtually most socio-economic indicators like government jobs, education, health care. In some cases their condition is even worse than that of the scheduled castes and tribes.

For instance, Muslims are severely underrepresented in government jobs. Their numbers are well below their share as a percentage of the population. In Assam where they constitute 30 %, they have only 11.2% of govt jobs; West Bengal (25%) 4.2% [This in a bastion of the supposedly secular CPI(M)]; Kerala (24%) 10.4%; UP (18.5%) 5.1%. Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are states with more proportionate representation.

Even in the judiciary its the same story. Muslims share of jobs here is less than their population share overall. When it comes to education Muslims are worse off than OBCs, SCs and STs.