A short essay on riding a bike in sadashiv peth [Part I]

India, with its excesses and ambitions, has a wide variety of powerful and powerless bikes availabe to the average customer. these, i may add, are auto and manual transmission based. while the ones using the former mode of transmission are those who dont have to worry about clutching, shifting, neutral, etc etc and thus speed up, slow down, stop, again speed up, at their own sweet wills, i shall leave them aside from this manual-transmissioned-perspective and in fact treat their presence on the roads with a (partly jealous) trivialization.

Sadashiv Peth is a different bet altogether from the wide, well-made, well-divided roads that our contemporaries are so used-to and happy 80 kmph-ing on.
What with its innumerable turnings, and nondescript lanes all along the roads, crossing 30 becomes tough. crossing 50 is what you do only on LSD and end up at a sadashiv peth 2-bed hospital with awesome docors, but expired tinctures.

While riding, a beginner usually regards 4-feet-wide lanes as useless and not very dangerous. it is when this same lane bournes a speeding Tata Sumo/Hyundai Accent/Tata Indica, that he gets shocked and in the end applied all the levers endowed to him by his two-wheeler and runs the risk of skidding and crashing into an old building, an old shop, or an old man.
These Sumo's/Accents/Indica's, mind you, do not respect that fact that they need to honk or dip before exiting from non-existence onto a main road. they would rather zoom past from one non-descript lane into another.

[To be continued]

the other day, as i reached M22 for my morning class, i found a group of unknown women, average age 22, standing outside. accompanying them was a junior friend of mine, who told me about them. they were from some organisation called 'teach for india'.
"ah. teach india. but of course...the times of india thingy..there're here to get people to join?" i asked.
"no. its teach For india. its different. and i've been assigned to show them around and get them to give their presentation to as many classes as possible."

as i told her then, there were precisely six people attending class that morning, and the visiting women seemed rather put-off. but, well, what else can u expect at 9 am on a cold lazy morning in a college where attendance is not compulsory?

anyways, they started their presentation. and when they spoke the first few words i nearly fell off my chair. they had a fake american accent!! for Gawd's sake!

they spoke to us about how they arrange as agents and sponsors of the Educated to go and teach underpriviledged children, etc. (quite similar to teach india)
this would, however, have been sufficient for 20-year old almost-graduates. No. they, by now, seemed to be rather affected by the sleepy/stoned response the six of us were giving them..so now they decide to keep on asking us questions like "what do u think is the dichotomy in indian education", which digressed into "ok tell me what differences do u notice between a private school and a government school", which soon became a frantic "do u think everyone in india is educated as much as you??". the desperation to drive in a already-known point was apparent and pissing off.

by now they were treating us like underpriviledged children themselves, talking ever so slowly and asking more and more basic questions. i knew this would be a rather long affair now. (our ma'm was blissfully happy that this way she would get lesser time to teach, and thus taking no efforts to cut this arduous presentation short)

but! all of a sudden, the main presenter said "so thats all we had to say" any quick questions?
i asked her who these kids were. and where will the volunteers teach them?
"low income private schools"
-"never heard of them. didu just say private schools? didnt we just know how they are different from the grassroots govt schools, etc?"
"umm..uhh..yes..they Are indeed LIPS as we call them."
-"ugh."

a north indian girl asked if knowledge of marathi was necessary.

"of course not! you will teach in english..and a little bit of hindi is fine to communicate with their parents."

didnt go down too well with me.
"but isnt marathi the language that almost all the lower class people of this city use?" i asked.
-"um yes.. but we are teaching in english medium..and we are campaigning to convert the marathi medium LIPS to english ones"

and they went on about how even parents want kids to learn english. but did this mean that they should be alienated from their vernacular language or that they should have teachers who dont know it at all?
my further arguments about the importance of teaching basic concepts in their mother tongue (and certainly not badly accented english) drowned amidst their insensitivity and corporated-ness, and my own mind's reclusion against all this.

just heard that the NSG will be covering the security for this year's mood indigo. clearly shows that even college fests attracting students from all over aren't anymore the places where we get to feel, at least slightly, disconnected from the moribund life outside.

It's quite obvious that my previous post needs heavy updating. When I posted it, Musharraf was still the General, lawyers still protested, Choudhury was still the Chief Justice, and there was no bloodless end in sight (there still isn't, actually)

Well, Musharraf shed his army camos for good and got into the seemingly humble suit-and-tie of a civilian president, while the world hushed and gaped at this previously unpredicted event. But, well, after the ceremonies were over and newspapers found different headlines, a thought started lingering in my mind.
Is there ANY difference at all between now, and then?
-Musharraf is not the Chief-of-Staff anymore, but he's now the legally elected Supreme Commander
-The new general (whose name i cant remember now), has been "hand-picked" by Musharraf
-Emergency has been lifted, prime ministerial elections scheduled, and almost every other short-term problem solved.

more after more research :)

A thing or two from good old Pervez

General Pervez Musharraf, Chief of Pakistan Army & President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, has more than one reason to worry. For one thing, the upcoming 2008 Presidential elections may just strip him off either, or both, of his offices. But what’s of bigger concern now is that, the General is cornered in the same country where seven years ago he overthrew the reigning government and set up a rule of his own.

The Chief is cornered, and how. The extremist forces, especially Taliban, take the biggest responsibility in this.

US and NATO intelligence reports say that al Qaeda and Taliban are operating camps and outfits in the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. And predictably, the US has directed Musharraf to ‘compulsorily’ take ‘military actions’ against the extremists, else all development funds will stop. Just as Musharraf tried to abide by this and ordered prompt military action in the Lal Masjid case, the same military action was considered by many Islamists across the country as a war cry. Almost all worshippers and students of madarsas connected to the Lal Masjid declined to pray when the government appointed a new cleric in the masjid (which was also given an off-white colour).

Again, as Musharraf tried to strike a balance between US wants and his countrymen’s changing stances, the lawyers and justices of his country chose the same time to prove their point against the general’s authoritarian and anti-democratic actions against the Judiciary (when he unconditionally removed Chief Justice Mohammed Ifthikhar Choudhary). Again, the judiciary, along with Justice Choudhary, took it up then as a war-cry and made sure office is restored, in a perfectly legal way, to Choudhary.

Then again you have 2008 poll contenders and former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto. Sharif is still on exile and is burning midnight oil planning ways to enter into his motherland. Bhutto, on the other hand, seems to have tried to strike a secret understanding with Musharraf. If this seemed to be some sort of relief for the General, then the media promptly reported that during the Lal Masjid crisis, both leaders remained mum.

Amid such uncertainties and political disasters, the good old Kashmir issue still exists. Obviously only a robot can think of so many problems at once, but Musharraf (and India) very well knows the fact that the more troubles he has inside his country, the lesser time he can give to the Kashmir dispute. And the lesser time any country gives to the Kashmir dispute, more the number of infiltrations and security lapses.

As I said, Musharraf is cornered. His political, military, diplomatic, and unfortunately even biological life seems to be very uncertain. It is in this situation that I feel somebody should shed a tear for the General, and try to remember what all he did that can be learnt by individuals, and nation states. The list, however, is short.

Firstly, Musharraf’s stance towards the Kashmir issue should be applauded. From the general who once forced his army into the region to the general who came to the same country and gave a diplomatically-approvable 5-point peace program, is an impressive journey. Also, the general gave his nod to the Iran-Pak-India pipeline, a file he could have kept in cold storage for a long long time.

Secondly, the strong attitude shown by him against Islamic extremists in his own country is a brave lesson. Sure he was under tremendous pressure from US and other allies, but taking such an unprecedented strong action should not go unnoticed.

Lastly, I would like to stress on just one small point. As of today, the disputes between India and Pakistan, including the Kashmir dispute, can have horribly negative implications including heavy terrorist actions and/or nuclear war.

It is at that behest that I feel that having a dictator in Pakistan who doesn’t mind striking peace initiatives with us and who takes anti-extremism seriously, is not just necessary but also a matter of extreme importance.

Encountering Reality

We as Indians have grown up hearing about so called "encounter specialists": policemen who are enough cold-blooded to kill innocent people and declare it as an "encounter" thus slipping away from the judiciary. Even movies have portrayed this side of our "free and independent" judiciary. True, the provision of encounter has done good to the society before and one can cite many examples where dangerous criminals have been caught or killed by the police just because they could 'do an encounter'.
Till now, there have been hundreds, even thousands of such cases. Sadly, in almost all of them, the criminal policemen have escaped. This is probably one of the biggest loop-holes in our justice system, and hardly any effort has been made to do anything about it.

If you noticed news headline over the past week, you will find a lot about a certain Sohrabuddin and his wife and how they were allegedly killed by policemen in a conspiracy that reaches high offices of the Indian Police Service.

On November 26, 2005 Sohrabuddin Sheikh, a petty criminal and his wife were abducted by the Gujarat Police from a Belgaum-bound Inter-state bus. The husband was encountered soon. And, according to recent reports, his wife became a victim too.

Almost one and half years later, on 23 April2007, CID named the encounter as fake and arrested three senior IPS officers in connection with the same. Two of them belonged to the Gujarat Police while the third to the Rajasthan Police.

Soon the blame game began and is, in fact, still in progress.

The Gujarat police named the slain as a Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist, and said that he was planning a murder of Gujarat CM Narendra Modi. The Rajasthan Police defended its police officer. The Gujarat Government then blamed the Andhra Pradesh Police for being 'hand-in-gloves'. And on and on, as it always does.

This blog is being written neither in defence of the victim, nor in defence of the police. The blogger neither cares where the supreme court case goes nor does he want to think of the political repurcussions. The sole purpose here is to make the reader aware of the increasing insecurity among citizens, innocent and criminals. This country is a democracy, right? its not an autocracy where no reasons can be given for most of the things that happen.

How come policemen, including the top brass, indulge in something as bad as cold-blooded murder? How come the judiciary remains with absolutely no law with which it can contain such offense? Why is it that most of these offenders move scots-free among us, even today?

I dont know whether this is a case of human rights or municipal law. i dont know if it is worth taking to the court. I dont even know if its worth talking about at all.

All I know is that whats happening is not right, and none of us are very safe with this very dangerous loophole still in place.

Think about it next time you hear of the neighbourhood 'encounter specialist' who will charge just a small sum to get your enemy slained.

New NCERT Textbooks (Phew!)

I just read a report in the Outlook magazine about the new face of NCERT (National Council for Educational Research & Training; the guys in-charge of making textbooks for CBSE students) textbooks of political science and civics for class 12. All I could say after that was: "Phew! About time!"
Finally finally finally and finally, students won't be compelled to read paragraphs over paragraphs about the Indian constitutional and political structure. I remember that when I was reading those books in my 9th standard I actually thought that whats written in the books and what actually happens outside are supposed to be two totally different things. Not any more.
These new books now cover Indian political scenario in the *real* sense. All this limited upto some extent of course.
What I found to be the best was in the field of world politics, the textbook habitually iterated the word "US hegemony". Yes, they used that word in a textbook. Unbelievable, eh?
What can be a more realistic interpretation of the world than that?
If the report on the textbooks is believed to be correct, then these new books are going to present to the students the completely real world scenario: where the US uses its hegemony all over the world for its personal interests.
Yet, the best thing is that at the end of the day (rather at the end of the chapter) there is no bias or personal opinion about anything. Its all given in a balanced manner, and it is upto the student to analyse for himself/herself.

I believe that this is a major landamark in the history of indian education. Accolades to the NCERT for taking such a brave step inspite of growing political opposition against it (another hegemony?).



And.... the show is not over yet!!! What actually shows that the NCERT has come-of-age is a series of cartoons showcasing Unni and Munni, two typically indian characters, who comment on things in the text and beyond it.
My favourite is the one where Unni says "I don't know why they use difficult words like hegemony. In my town, its called dadagiri. Isn't that much better?"

Really, isn't that much better?