And the news at this hour ...

So now the judiciary is trying to break the back of the strike. They're citing concerns for the patients as their reason. What they don't realize is that the faculty in most med colleges are working overtime and extra hard to ensure that no patient who needs emergency care suffers. What they don't realize is that the doctors are themselves plagued by the same concerns and we're all just waiting for a fair decision so this can all end.
And besides, since when did giving up of the right to dissent become an occupational hazard?
And continuing besides, if doctors are answerable to the common man, what about the bloody government?

There, vented.

The funny thing about 24/7 news channels is the meaningless echolalia that goes on.

Snotty news anchor: We have just received breaking news that the strike is on. We are now going to take you to our correspondent who will tell us more about it. Hyperexcitable correspondent, we have just heard that the strike is on, can you tell us more about it?

Hyperexcitable correspondent: Thank you, snotty news anchor. Yes, we have just spoken to a lot of people and it is clear that the strike is still on. We'll now talk to a student guy who will tell us more. Student guy, is it true that the strike is still on?

Student guy: The strike is still on.

Hyperexcitable correspondent: As you can see, snotty news anchor, we have just spoken to student guy who has told us that the strike is still on. Back to you.

Snotty news anchor: We have just spoken to hyperexcitable correspondent who has just spoken to student guy who has confirmed that the strike is still on. Now we will speak to ...

In other news, the President returned the Office of Profit Bill and has once again redeemed my faith in him. But thanks to our wonderful, brilliantly crafted constitution, 'it dont matter'.

In still other news, Himesh Reshammiya's (a beautifully talented singer whose songs make you want to scream and kill the radio in a fit of passion) songs seem to cause unsuspecting youth in a remote village in Vadodara, to become possessed and behave in truly bizzare fashion, in Paheli style.
Thank God, they put news like that in prime time news hour, where else will we get our laughs.

Going Back to Life

For someone who constantly whined about being stuck in a rut, I really just want to get back to the comfortably numb routine of daily living.

no more agonizing over the state and politics; over our 'revolution' and how it's being trivialised by haggling over seat arithmetic; over hopeless infatuations; over having the gumption to make a drastic career change.

I had almost mastered the near-perfect routine: wake up at six-read-drive to college- work- drive back- study- a game of tennis- dinner with fam/friends- sleep.
There, a day that involves no looking at the bigger picture.

Of course, there'll be a different post once life does get back to normal.

love in the times of reservation

I have never found anything romantic about love. It’s just a distracting, nagging feeling that comes on its own and goes on its own.

After the God from Stanford got engaged (if I had only kept my big mouth shut and not insulted Ganguly) I really, really took a very, very solemn promise never to love again.

It doesn’t work that way. So now I have to battle this awful feeling while worrying about my future, the country’s future, and a lot of other things which I'm not worrying about right now but that dosn't mean I'm not worrying about them at all.

p.s: if somebody is actually reading this, i apologize for the tasteless blogpost title.

Long Live the Letter

I have always had faith in Letters to the Editor. ‘The Editor’ to me is a faceless, omnipotent paragon of morality and justice, whose ‘write and I shall publish’ policy would set the world right again.

I have written a lot of letters (on illegal organ transplants, corruption, Rahul Gandhi, the Clemenceau) and none have ever been published. My faith remains. I really have set a record of sorts about the quota-issue.

Time for my mother to take over – in response to Yogendra Yadav’s reply to Pratap B Mehta’s resignation letter.
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/4984.html


Dear Mr. Yogendra Yadav,

Yesterday I heard you propagating your formula for reservation on the basis of disadvantage points on the television and also read your letter to Mr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta in The Indian Express. Let me tell you at the very outset, without mincing any words, that I was terribly disappointed and disillusioned.

I had the privilege of meeting you some time in 1986 in Chandigarh at your residence. I was greatly impressed by your choice of a career in education over civil services. Since then, I have been an avid follower of your programs and Election Specials. However, after yesterday, I realized that another champion of Freedom of Thought has fallen prey to the malady of arm-chair intellectualism. Most of the intellectuals suffer from this, but et tu?

For almost eleven hundred years, India was ruled by the invaders who perpetuated the caste system for their own benefit and the Englishmen mastered this art to perfection. The present Congress leadership which fought with the Britishers for freedom won because they learnt their rules of the game. And now, they are past masters at the game of perpetuating their corrupt, self-serving and morally bankrupt regime. I fail to understand how you can blame the ‘upper castes’ for the social injustice in independent India which was ruled by your wise state government, wolf-in-the-sheepskin Congress party.

I am an educationist for the last 24 years dealing with children at primary and secondary levels. I never felt that merit was scoring high marks in the exams. You will agree that merit is achieved by developing the analytical and logical abilities of a child from the grass root levels. It is the ability of a person to deal with his environments in an intelligent manner, fighting against all odds.

The Disadvantage Points Formula will fail to redeem the society and break the caste cauldron in fact it will perpetuate it.
Let me ask you some pertinent questions.

How will you ask a child who although belongs to an upper caste, but is economically backward and scoring 85% marks, to reconcile with a child with 60% through reservation and securing a seat. What will you say to this particular child when he comes to know that the reserved candidates grandfather was an SP, the father an IAS Officer, and the son still availing the quota seat? So your Disadvantage Points Formula stands for inclusion of creamy layer?
3 generations of economically forward class and still availing reservation? This is what the agitating students are objecting to. They want a white paper to be prepared by an apolitical commission. Why is it so difficult for the government to agree to it? And you still trust them that they are for the Backward Castes? In fact, they want to perpetuate this neo-Brahminism in SC/ST/OBC.

How often, and how many crutches will be provided to this creamy layer when they are studying in the same school, taught by the same teachers and the same syllabus?

Don’t you think that these wily politicians have taken advantage of our naïve intellectual honesty and are laughing all the way to their vote banks? I can see their design of keeping reservation only at the tertiary level. Keep them happy by throwing a tukda of progress to them. Why don’t they ever talk of reservations at primary and secondary levels? It is because they will no longer be able to fool the educated multitude. The example in question is the pro-reservationist rallies where people were openly admitting that they were lured by money and they didn’t even know what the issue was.

Do you think this movement is just an elitist movement restricted to the Metro cities? Be thankful it is still in the hands of educated elite because they are reasonable, non-violent and believe that saner voices will stand up for their nation. Remember George Bush said that we have to beware of India and China because of their Intellectual Capital. Bring reservation and you jeopardize this.

As the enormity of the situation is becoming clear to the people, more of them are joining. From traders to bar girls, everyone is realizing the futility of this self-serving exercise of the politicians. They have time to pass Office-of-Profit Bill at the earliest when the 33% reservation for women is being stalled for the last 10 years. Is it not apparent what their priorities are? It is their “Office of Profit” not reservation, until women become a strong vote bank.

Instead of intellectual sparring, do you have a concrete program for the upliftment of the downtrodden i.e. economically and socially backward people? Otherwise, all intellectual discussion will be like the paper tiger. All of us will be happy that we have added something to the discussion, sit in our plush residences and feel that we have added our might to the debate.

Like Pratap Bhanu Mehta says, “Perhaps I trust society too much, perhaps you trust the state too much”
Is it possible for all of us to rise above narrow parochial interests of the politicians and combine these trusts to find a real solution? Perhaps I have, but who will listen to me? Who will understand the concern of this agitating educated intelligentsia?


Yours sincerely,

Anti-reservation

Haven't talked about that at all.
Haven't told you what it feels like
to be water cannoned and tear-gassed,
to save somebody from getting beaten up,
to watch somebody get lathi-charged,
to stand-by helplessly and watch people 'starve themselves for justice',
to campaign for a cause and to only get lip-service in return,
to fight a losing battle against the system
Haven't talked about that at all.

Defence mechanisms

Every day springs up some stressors. The response to them is autonomic and automatic.

We all have primitive, knee-jerk defence mechanisms that operate on a spinal level.
The time for introspection always comes later.

1. The Ostrich approach - this is the classic method to deal with a problem, which is to not deal with it. Just like ostriches who bury their heads in the sand when confronted with danger. (the source of that info is not Animal Planet, it is human folklore.)

2. Projection - playing the blame game

3. Compensation - This involves focussing your energies on anything but the problem.

4. Escape mechanisms - Mr. Smith who took to the drink.

5. Displacement - This is a case of the exploited being the exploiter.

6. Regression - Having a good cry, throwing a tantrum, sulking.

7. There is of course another rarer but truly bizarre mechanism - gallows humor.

My favourite is regression.

I'm reading ...

The Great Collection of Oscar Wilde.

I only get time to read it early in the morning for which I've had to sacrifice the newspaper. Most of it I've already read - the ones I hadn't include De Profundis, the deeply disturbing autobiographical letter he wrote to Lord Douglas but which I left halfway because it's a very, very long letter.

Rereading the plays is fun. It's nice to think that once upon a time, people had the time to talk in long, elaborately witty sentences.

I tried to get my brother to read it but he just snorted disapproval as if to say that 'real men don't read oscar wilde'.

When and how did the battle of the sexes extend to reading?

I read this article by C P Surendran
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1500155.cms
which was pretty entertaining except for the fact that it seems to classify people into three types -

1) women, who read soppy, romantic books like 'pride and prejudice'

2) men, who read books on rugged machismo like 'the outsider'

3) women who think (and read?) like men

And where does that leave men who read books by austen, bronte and wilde?

men who think like women?

and god knows, no man wants to be known like that.

... and the battle rages on.

(note to self - buy 'the outsider')

List of guilty pleasures

1) Driving handsfree

2) Always eating the last piece of cake.

3) Whining

4) Drifting off during a boring conversation

5) Being a closet 'chick-flick' fan.

6) Cursing

7) Oversleeping

8) Dropping ice down people's necks.

wake up and drink the coffee

So I've bought a dozen 3-in-1 Nescafe sachets which I just have to pour into a cup of boiling water and hah, instant coffee.

I must recommend it to a friend who's been dropping hints that I should buy her a cappuccino maker for her birthday.

ahh we are such yucolls.*

oh God, I have so much to study (in just 8 hours) and all I want to do is sleep.
Never mind, coffee should fix that.

i think if it wasnt for the coffee, i'd have no personality.


*young urban collegiates. I think I read that somewhere, along with that coffee-personality joke.

tell me, is it ok to "subconsciously internalize" on a blog too?

ahh, its really unfair to take such potshots at that poor girl.
I think I'm going to put it under my list of guilty pleasures.

dust and bones

I'm struggling with orthopaedics with a big test coming up.

I've always believed in the stereotype of an orthopaedician- a bone-snapping, knuckle-cracking, dr. fix-it hulk. So, its funny to imagine myself having anything to do with the science. This, despite having five brothers who between them, have had most fractures known to man.

Meanwhile there's hope, I read an advertisement for a 7-day trekking adventure around Manali.

I so desperately need a break (no pun intended).

summer days

I have an olde car. It has no air-conditioning, no seatbelts, no stereo-surround. It does have an engine, for which I am grateful.

Driving back in the heat is awful. I sweat, I curse, I honk at poor pedestrians, I drive like a mad woman (is there any other kind of female driving, you may ask).

I stopped at a red light today and turned around to catch a glimpse of a Demi-God in a his heaven-mobile.
He wore a freshly starched white shirt, his tie loosened, hair slightly ruffled, dark glasses, a suitcase carelessly placed on the leather upholstery of a sleek Mercedes S-class. He sat back relaxed, one hand casually on the steering wheel, fingers drumming to an inaudible music, exuding Cool.

I must have been quite a picture - beads of sweat on my forehead, matted hair, a red flush on a badly tanned face, exhaust smoke blurring any pretty features.

The gap between the Haves and the Can I have him? has never been wider

Dear Hypertext

This was on my to-do list today:

"Meet The President"

It made me nearly burst with self-importance. I told everybody I know and now I have to tell you.

So I'm finally a blogger too.

This is the point of no return.
Next, I'll be on social networks like Orkut.
Then I'll start posting on lonelyplanet.com.
I'll know about frooble and floogle.
I'll buy an i-Pod and finally figure out how to download music from the net.
I'll be checking my mail 99 times a day.
And finally all those "internet addicts recovery program" jokes will be applicable to me.

And the worst thing is ... the President was busy.