Slumdogs. White Tigers. Indians.

While I was exchanging the latest gossips of our same-old-same-old life with a friend in U.S. over a Skype call, we steered over to the topic of how the movie ‘Slumdog Millionare‘ and the book ‘The White Tiger‘ have changed the Western mindset towards India. Suddenly from the country of Elephants, yoga, Kamasutra and snake charmers, India is now a nation where ‘all’ the poor kids are blinded and turned into beggars. Where poor drivers from Bihar fantasise to ‘dip their beaks’ in a women with golden white hair.

There is no point in denying the fact that both the movie and the book are spot on. Yes, Jamal can be any of the thousands of slum kids in India who lost his mother during the riots and cheated tourists in Taj Mahal. Yes, Balram Halwai can be any of the numerous drivers on the roads of Delhi who have broken away from the ‘darkness’ and come to the ‘light’. But, the problem is in the generalization. Needless to say that a work of fiction is incomplete without a tinge of tragedy, a question which my friend S asked me and which set me thinking was –

“Have you ever done any of the things shown in the movie or the book? If no, then where is your story? Why doesn’t anyone write about you? Just because that won’t sell?”

Yes, maybe that won’t sell. The most tragic thing that has happened to me is when a friend of mine lied to me. This is hardly something comparable to what happened to Ammu in ‘The God of Small Things‘ or to Krishna in ‘Salaam Bombay‘ or to Biju in ‘The Inheritance of Loss‘.

A story of an individual cannot be superimposed on a whole nation. I had a very normal childhood. I belong to an average middle class family where we were taught about the thin line between necessity and luxury. I never dropped out of the school but passed out with top grades. I went to the best University in the country and had a blast during my college life. I did my post graduation from another top University in India and immensely enjoyed my hostel life with a great set of friends. I have been working with the best IT firm in India from the last 4 years and everything in my life is very very smooth. I have not done anything which Jamal did or Balram Halwai did.

There is a whole generation of millions of Indians who have grown up like me. We never had an imperative need to rob someone for money or bribe someone to cover up a murder. We don’t live in slums and never carried guns. We work in air conditioned offices and travel by our cars. I am not undermining the fact that people like Balram and Jalam exist, but India right now is like two colliding galaxies. There are two entirely different worlds which coexist. My British colleague who came to India last year asked me –

‘How do you cope up with all that? How does your mind grapple the fact  that on one side of the road, there is a high rise with swanky offices and on the other side there is a beggar sleeping on the road?’

I had no answer. All I could tell him was that not very far in the distant past, there were no high rise. So, we have taken a leap. We are in fact in the middle of a leap, suspended in mid air, with one leg forward and one backward. We may fail badly or with an extra push, we may make a world record. There is no nation in this world which has not coped up with poverty and corruption at one point of time. Right now its our turn.

We have a very tenacious tendency of adhering to our prejudiced mindsets and to believe in what suits us. When someone shows us half a painting and asks us to believe that what he is showing is the full painting, we do, as long us that ‘suits’ us. As long as it makes us feel better about our own life.

They were important stories. Stories which need to be told. But they are not the only stories. They are not the only truth. Generalizing something and being  partial or biased can be very easy but as every White man is not a racist, as every Muslim is not a terrorist, as every leader is not as brainless as Bush and as ruthless as Hitler, as every Maharashtrian does not support Bal Thackeray, as every Hindu is not a vegetarian, as every American is not money minded, as every Britisher is not a snob, as every Australian is not a criminal, similarly, every Indian is not a Balram Halwai.

[The image is that of a Metro Station in New Delhi with an enormous statue of Hanuman in the backdrop]

What is the purpose of your life?

Last Sunday, as I was trotting towards the nearest bus stand with two of my friends as we hurried to catch up our show of  Transformers:Revenge of the fallen, we were halted in the middle of the road by three young chaps. They hailed from a Christian society and were very polite. One of them threw a question at us – “What is the purpose of your life?”

Now, imagine yourself in such a situation. You are all excited and ready to see the latest machine war flick and someone pops the “purpose of life” question in front of you. Its like asking a soldier to choose the menu for the dinner while he is busy dodging bullets in the enemy’s firing line.

“Right now, the purpose of my life is to reach IMAX on time.”, I said and smiled.

“Would you like to have a postcard from us which will entitle you to a dvd about Jesus Christ? Its for free.”

“Yes!”

I could not believe this. They were young kids who could be watching a movie or going on a date. Instead, they were stopping people in the middle of the road and asking them the purpose of life!?! I found those guys too spiritual, in the same way in which they would have found me too materialistic.

When Swami Dayanand saw the mouse trampling on the ShivaLingam, he was devastated. He could not understand that how can the Almighty Lord possibly allow a mere mouse to just walk over his statue and eat the offerings? Asked in another way, if God wants Earth to be the Garden on Eden, then why does he allow evil to breed? Yes, we have all heard about the balance between the Good and the Evil, but isn’t that too lame an excuse for God’s incompetency?

Sometimes I feel that we are obsessed with the unknown. Aliens, werewolves, mermaids, witches, vampires, yeti, fairies, dragons, heaven, hell. God. Don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that I don’t believe in God. I know there is a power which drives us. Its not all about probability, serendipity or theory of randomness. There is something more to it and I am sure that that shall never be revealed to us. That is our destiny. To understand God is to unscramble scrambled eggs.

What I hate is the Glorification, the Spiritualization of the rest of us by a selected few, the sanctification, the cleansing and the conversions. If someone has to come to me and ask me the purpose of my life then either that person is absolutely confused about the purpose of his own life OR my face gives an impression that I am completely purposeless and I am sure that the latter is not true. 🙂

If we have not realized this by now, Religion is a business in modern times. It always was, but now its booming. We have billions riding on it. When a temple can raise a donation of Rs 5 Crores(approximately 1,046, 684 $) in 7 hours, then the sky is the limit. The terrorism industry is an offspring of religion. The politicians use religion to get to the seat of power. We use it as a reason to rape women. We use it to forcibly marry off our children without their consent. Its a way to make instant money on the internet. And if you have no reason to hate your neighbour, religion can be a very tempting bait. And so where is God in all this? Well, maybe he is sitting in a corner and doing this :

I am sure I am born for a purpose but I am also sure that a priest or a spiritual Guru cannot reveal it to me. No one can. I am sure this is something which can’t be revealed. Maybe there is nothing to be revealed, but to understand. I am also sure that chanting a deity’s name or lying in the feet of the lord or donating crores for a yagya cannot be the purpose of my existence.

If you look at the chart of the Earth’s evolution at the top, humans have just appeared. Its amusing how we have pushed the Earth on the brink of collapse in such a short span of time. The rate at which we are going, we will end up being nothing more than a faint flash of existence on the vast timeline of the universe. We can either live for thousands of years in harmony or we can end up like the dinosaurs.

The existence of each generation of humans is a story with a moral at the end. It is us who will be writing the moral for the next generation. Its us who will be deciding whether the next generation will live a life better or worse than us. To give them a better life, all we have to do is to just live our lives without any hatred and everything else will fall into places. Just live.

Now how is that for a purpose?

When victim is the culprit

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality. – Bishop Desmond Tutu

So when my eyes fell upon this news article according to which girls in Kanpur have to adhere to certain ‘safety’ measures taken by the colleges to discourage sexual harassment, my first impulse was a bewildered laughter. And what are those ‘safety measures’? Well, its quite simple and basic actually. They can’t wear jeans in colleges anymore. One clean sweep and we have taken a giant stride towards freeing our country of rapists and molesters!

Run! Quick! Cover the girls!

It reminds me of an ostrich, digging a hole and burying his head as soon as he senses danger.

This isn’t something new. Women have always been accused of inviting rapes and harassment because they were wearing ‘provocative’ dresses(how jeans is provocative is something beyond me). And its not just women. Recently, Indians in Australia were told by the authorities that they invited the attacks because they carry laptops and mp3 players openly(this was something not even worth a bewildered laugh from me). And haven’t we blamed the poor for their conditions instead of the socio economic structure and how the rich suck their blood?  So, what is it with us? Why is a victim the culprit?

The Utopia

Since our birth, we are seasoned to look at the world with rose tinted glasses. Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. God works in black and white, there are no greys. So, when a man is stabbed in a deserted lane, he is accused of inviting trouble by going there in the first place. He must have done something wrong for God to punish him with the lightening of his wrath. Death, rape, robbery, molestation does not happen to people who are good. Who remain in their limits.

Believe me, I know people who supported the recent beating up of girls in a pub in Mangalore. People are living in a fairy land created by God and they will go to any extend to maintain its sanctity. It does not matter to them that they are breaking the very laws which they have created to guard the sanctity. It does not matter to them that they are shielding the thief who stabbed the man.

Aha! A scapegoat!

Incompetency is a huge albatross to carry. Law enforcing agencies are full of incompetent people who are there just to collect money or with people who don’t have a clue about their responsibilities. And too bad if your vote bank is full of religious fanatics. Even if the government try to think about amending the age old laws which were made to curb the freedom of an individual, the fanatics will be at their throats talking about God’s will and the holy shit.

So, what happens when an illiterate housewife named Zafran Bibi goes to the police claiming that she was raped and was pregnant? She is accused of adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. For a rapist to be convicted, the crime has to be confirmed by four male eyewitnesses and the rapist must confess, they said.

Suffering and Happiness

We feel relieved and in control of our lives when we see someone suffer or when we spot a fresh scapegoat. Its a human trait. Nothing to be ashamed of. We feel more close to God.

‘Thank God, It was not me.’, we say. God has blessed me and I must be good. Relieved. Happy. Unscathed.

We forget the fact that the whole society rides on the same wave. There is nothing disjoint here. We all go up together and we all come crashing down together. Its like cancer. You can’t tell your hand that everything is all right when you have a brain tumor.

Good old Fate

Its funny how while explaining the action and its outcome for other people, we tend to emphasise on their psyche but when we find ourselves in that situation, then its all about the situation. Its threatening to our ego to accept our internal failures. Its safe to say that you were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Oh God what did I do? and all that crap!

Well! You were riding the wave and it came crashing down!

When a team wins, its skills and hard work and happiness. When it loses, we burn effigies. Suddenly from being the victims of our over-pressurization, they are now the culprits.

In the End

And so you ask, ‘What about the innocent bystanders?’ But we are in a time of revolution. If you are a bystander, you are not innocent. – Abbie Hoffman

Maybe its easier to blame someone who is weak. Its less trouble. We live happily in Neverland till tragedy is at our doorsteps. We need some sort of a vicarious brain machine to wake us up. We need to live ‘those’ moments which pull you to reality and make you realize that a victim needs the whole helping hand instead of a finger pointing at him.

Maybe we need to realize that the girls in Kanpur need a free distribution of chili powder and Karate classes instead of a ban on wearing jeans.

Maybe we need to realize that stoning a woman to death will not stop the next rape.

Maybe we need to realize that every culprit was once a suppressed victim.

The Blame Game

Oscar Wilde once said – What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

People end up reminding me of that quote too often. On a dull cloudy Monday morning, during an official meeting, someone passed a blame. It was subtle. Well crafted. I snapped. It was one of those WTF moments. What allows people to be so shamelessly naked and still claim to be draped in Cashmere yarn? We had an internal gossip meeting later on and my British colleagues asked a simple question – Why? They were apparently in a shock. They told me that they have never done that. To err is human and why is it so hard to just say “I am sorry” instead of pointing fingers – they asked. I had no answer at that point of time, but it set me thinking.

Was it an Indian thing? The naked guy definitely was. Is this kind of a behaviour an outcome of the competitive and cut throat environment we are brought up in? Is it because we have always seen our elders keep their ego above right and wrong? Is it because our parents always teach us to be good than the rest of the herd and in the process turn us into evil money generating cynics? Is it “actually” an Indian thing or is there another layer below it?

Well, it could be. Consider my job. I few bad ratings and I could be easily thrown out. I just have to rub someone on the wrong side. The rating system is royally out of shape like Rani Mukherjee’s waistline. There won’t be any repercussions for the company because the laws which hold an employee to his job are as fragile and dumb as Paris Hilton. There won’t be any compensations. So, what do I do when I commit a mistake? I try to hide it. Plain and Simple. I have a car loan to pay. And sometime later on in time, a house loan too. I can’t afford to commit mistakes.

Have we just dissolved away the idea of attaching a moral and ethical value to our acts and simply end up putting a price tag on everything?

Its all right to put price tags on “things”, but now there are invisible price tags on the repercussions of our actions too?

Isn’t it a shame? We belong to a land where people stood by each other and fought the war of Independence, fought for what was morally right(Its another story that they killed each other after the war was won, but lets not get there).

AND, maybe its not an Indian thing. Its a human thing. Its just that it is we(in this case), who were caught with our pants down. What if I switch the working environments and the living conditions? Will my British colleagues end up in a whirlpool of moral upheaval and cynicism? More importantly, will my Indian colleagues shed the price tags from their acts and stop pointing fingers if they knew that things would be very stable? I am not sure if there are answers to these questions, because human nature is as unpredictable as the weather in Manchester.

Of-course, there is an “Utopian” scenario too. Think of a team where all the members are good friends. They all understand that they have to together make the project work and have a common goal. They like each others company and are ready to help. I have worked in such a team and believe me, it is at that point when cynicism is taken over by trust and responsibility of one’s own acts and the social conditions/wrong upbringing are thrown at the back-burner. But then, that’s rare.

Its human to point fingers. Nations have pointed fingers at other nations and completely destroyed them. We point fingers at God even when we slip on a banana peel. When Gollum pointed finger at Sam and said – “He took it!!”, he was not just influencing Frodo. He was creating a path to reach the ring. No matter how contrived and shrewd he might have looked at that point but he had his own justified-to-himself reasons. Everyone has.

But is there a way out? Or is it just that we are all Gollums in our own way?

Fear

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

p.s. This is (again) not an email forward. 😉

Randomizer : Eurovision, Dances with Wolves & IPod touch

• A few of my British colleagues introduced me to Eurovision  just before the semifinals started this year. I was quite surprised that I have never heard of this contest before. When something has been going on from the last 50 years, you are bound to hear about it sometime. My faith in my “already gone to the dogs” general knowledge was yet again shaken and stirred. Anyways, Eurovision is a song competition in which all the active members of the European Broadcasting Union participate.

Right now, EBU spans 75 broadcasting organizations from 56 countries. Each member country submits a song to be performed on live television. People from all the countries vote for their favorite songs. You can’t vote for your own country. 😉 The program broadcasts each year since its inception in 1956 and is the most watched non sporting event in the world. Believe me, the statistics are mind boggling! An estimated 100-600 million people watch the show. 

This year’s Eurovision was held in Moscow and was a bit special. 42 countries participated this year with 25 countries reaching the finals. You can watch the 25 entries that made it to the finals here. The contest was finally won by 23 year old Alexander Rybak from Norway for his song “Fairytale”. The song was written and composed by him and Alexander won by a whooping 387 points, the highest ever in the 50+ year history of the Eurovision contest.

UK somehow managed to bag the fifth spot, which was very good(according to my colleagues here) because the country has been on a downslide from the past few years. I was a little taken aback when I saw Andrew Lloyd Webber playing the piano while Jade Ewen sang “Its my time”. That is when the enormity of the contest hit me. 🙂

“Fairytale” is a beautiful song and it has that old world charm. If you listen to all the 25 finalists, this one stands apart. I personally also liked Croatia’s entry “Lijepa Tena” for its “Kaun hai jo”-ish tune from Jhuk Gaya Aasmaan and Germany’s “Miss Kiss Kiss Bang” for obvious reasons. 😉 Do watch this performance by the 23 year old winner:

• Besides the usual popcorn flicks like XMen Origins(3/5), StarTrek(4/5) and Angels & Demons(2/5) I saw quite a few noteworthy movies last month. Dances with Wolves was one such movie. When I finished watching the movie, I realized what an Idiot I was for not watching it earlier. It has been lying in my laptop from almost a year now. 😐 Beautifully shot, its a story of a Civil War-era United States Army lieutenant who is sent to an American Frontier to find a military post. The story evolves around with his friendship with the local Sioux tribe. Most of the dialogues are in Lakota language. Do watch this movie if you haven’t seen it yet. Another notable movie was the German movie titled Das Leben der Anderen(The lives of Others). Its the story of a Stasi agent named Wiesler in East Germany of 1984. He is assigned to spy on a playwright named Georg Dreyman, who is a suspect because of his Western contacts. The movie has a very interesting screenplay and the end is just perfect. A must watch!

 

• Now since this is one of those I-will-blabber posts , The Great Indian elections left me with mixed feelings. I was expecting nothing less than a 90% turnout in Delhi and Mumbai because of what both the cities have gone through the past year and because of the ubiquitous Lead India initiative but the results were shocking. Somehow the Delhi crowd is too smart. They knew that even if its a 10% turnout, no one would ever let BJP win. So there. But, yes, it somehow made one thing very clear. The average citizen is tired. Tired of the foolery they are subjected to now and then.
• Well, in the end, some good news from my own life. No I am not getting married. 😐 Be a little less predictable. 😛 Ok. Here goes. I was awarded the Blog-o-laureate award by Arpit a few days back. Thanks Arpit for considering me for the honour!

Also, I got my own Ipod Touch and Camera. Something very funny happened with my IPod touch after a month it was purchased. A thin horizontal line started appearing on the screen, which made me instantly sweat. I went to the nearest Apple store and they asked me to take an appointment. 😐 Appointment?!?

Anyways, I took the next day’s appointment and reached there 10 minutes late. The appointment was missed and the chewing gum chewing blonde asked me to fix an appointment for the next day! I grabbed her it for the next day and was there on time. Phew! I was expecting that the technical staff would have a look and probably keep the Ipod to find out what the problem was. Instead the guy looked at it for a few seconds, plugged it into his Mac and checked it again and coolly told me that he will be giving me a new piece. I stared at him for a good 10 seconds. And then ladies and gentlemen, I came back home with a brand new Ipod. 😉 It is definitely the coolest application made by Homo Sapiens. 

And, about my camera…well all of you have seen the results! All the flowers in my previous post were shot by it. If you still want to have a look, click here.
And now with great sadness, I announce the end of this blabber post. Over and Out!

Have you ever…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

p.s. NO. I did not get all this in a forwarded email.

Feminism, A and the Award

Ages ago, I was tagged by Nita and Sulz and till now I have been shamelessly ignoring the tags. But the guilt is killing me and I must finish the task assigned to me. Keeping the melodrama aside, I’ll start with Nita’s tag. This is what she tagged me to write about.

What does Feminism means to me

First of all, I was not sure what the word meant, so I landed up in an online dictionary and this is what popped up there : 

fem·i·nism n.  

1. Belief in the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.

2. The movement organized around this belief.

Ahem! Well, I think, the socio economic structure of the society in which we live plays an important role in determining the level of the “movement”. When the First wave came, India was still fighting for its freedom and there was no way it could have affected her. When the second wave came in the 1960s, India was all up and ready for it. Even today when we are in the third wave, an American society is much mature when it comes to a woman choosing the kind of life she wants to lead. In India, we still beat up the girl if she falls in love with a guy outside her cast. Infact, even if you compare the freedom given to women in a city with a small town/village in India, you would be shocked by the difference. After three waves, we still have to go a long way in India. Even after having laws in place, there are rapes, sexual harassment, forced abortions, forced reproductions, domestic violence etc and what not! People still think that women are vulnerable because they are weak but its just because of the kind of environment we are all brought up in. I am sure any woman who is a black belt in Karate can throw me two feet towards the sky with a single chop. 🙂

The problem is in our brains. We are wired in a wrong fashion from the time we are born. Women are not born vulnerable but are taught to be so. Similarly men are not born strong. They pick it up from what they see in their family and surroundings. I could never understand how we reached a stage where a human has to ask for her rights? And what surprises me is that we are still there. 

All these issues are way too big, but people need to understand the basic rights of an individual. I can understand when a father asks her daughter to return home before twilight because raping a girl is becoming an activity as common as wiping your ass with a tissue. But, I cannot understand when he asks her to forget the guy she loves because he does not belong to the same community. I find that laughable. Similarly, I don’t believe that a homemaker is worse off than a working woman. Its a very individual choice and depends on many factors. Equality of sexes certainly does not mean that a woman has to work to be a true blue feminist. 

It all boils down to the theory of Live and let live. We all make sacrifices in our life, but let’s not force someone to make a sacrifice because of her gender.

The alphabet A

Sulz’s tag. I have to write 7(?) words starting with alphabet A. I am putting up words which describe me. Here goes :

Absurd – Yes!Yes! I am ridiculous, illogical and senseless at times, but then even God is sometimes! So you see, no one is perfect. 😛 

Able – Leaving aside the fact that I am destiny’s favourite toy, I am quite able if I am left to my own means. If I find something interesting enough, I’ll take it up with perfect dexterity till the time I get completely bored of it. I told you I was absurd! 😛

Assiduous – I have obtained this quality from my Mom. Whenever I have to shop for clothes and I take her with me, she picks up clothes which are poles apart from my taste and then both of us “assiduously” attempt to disparage each other. 😐 Well, I consider it to be a good quality. Atleast I pick up clothes of my choice and I always win! 🙂

Aloof – I can be alarmingly aloof with strangers, so much that I am mistaken as an Egotist whose nose is always at an angle of 80 degrees from the ground. Many of my friends were surprised when they dared to know me better after that initial cold shoulder. 

Amiable – Well! That is what I actually become once I allow you to be my friend. 🙂 Its a difficult path and only a few daredevils have dared. 😛

Anchor – Whenever I become a part of a group, I end up becoming the anchor which holds the group together after everyone moves away to their new life/city. I met a group of friends recently after 7 years and again(!!!!) it was me who made all the phone calls and arranged the meeting. Good old Amit!

The awards

Finally, the awards. I was given the Friendship Embracelet by Kiran sometime back and the Garland Award by Kanagu. Thankyou both of you. 🙂

 

That is all guys and girls. Over and out.

Can I live please?

I went to Barakhamba Road yesterday. I was standing at the exact place where the bomb blast happened last year. I moved my right ankle in a semi circle to displace the dirt on the road. Maybe I was trying to see if it was still red? I went there to meet my very old friends whom I was meeting after a gap of 7 years.  While standing there I realized how fragile my own life was. I have a lovely family, adorable friends, a good job and some dreams, but someone can press a button and everything will vanish in a second. I just have to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Moving around in Connaught Place yesterday gave me this creepy feeling. I loved that place! I have some beautiful memories of C.P. but now there is always this fear that its not a safe place. The old warm feeling has died. Its gone.

Whom should I blame? Whom should I blame for embedding this fear in my heart? The fear that I might have to see a mingled, limbless, burnt body of a family member one day? The fear that I, who just want to lead his normal life and live happily ever after with his family and friends, might be blown apart the very next second?

Should I blame the Indian Government? Indians have a “Get used to it” attitude towards everything. Someone is littering on the road. Get used to it! Spitting? Get used to it! Corrupt policemen? Get used to it! BOMB BLASTS? Get used to it! Ofcourse, the Government officials also suffer from the same disease. It took thousands of people flocking the roads of Mumbai and carrying derogatory posters to wake up the government and to make them realise that there is a difference between butchering humans and butchering goats, to make them realise that they were chosen to protect us, to make them realise that “Get used to it” is not going to work this time. We, the citizens of India, choose politicians and give them bullet proof vehicles and 50 black cat commandos each from our hard earned money, not because they can feel safe and forget about the common man who is as vulnerable as he always was. Thinking and mulling over something is good but there comes a point when action is required. How long did the Pakistan Government took to sack its National Security adviser after he confirmed that the lone surviving terrorist is Pakistani? And how long did the Indian Government took to decide “something” about what Mr. A.R. Antulay said? The difference is stark and naked, and THAT is the problem with us. Having a pessimistic and defensive approach does not work when your neighbouring countries are a breeding ground for terrorists. War can never be an option, but can the  government at least come strong on our own security agencies and the police force? 

Or should I blame the Pakistani PM? He is trying every trick to make the world believe that its an internal problem of India. Infact, after his latest statement today, which says that – Why is the world more concerned about the Mumbai attacks than the killings in Palestine? ‘‘We have to see that the world does not have double standards. See how many innocent women and children have been killed in Palestine. Why is nobody talking about that? Why is the world silent on that?’’, I have decided not to follow the buffoonery anymore. Its tormenting. I think its high time that the Pakistani PM stops using the forced and mindboggling euphemisms and tell India to go to hell. That would be at least honest, if nothing else! Whether it may be Mumbai or Palestine, you would be glad to know Mr. PM, that it is me, the common man, who is dying.

I don’t care about the political mud slinging matches which Indian and Pakistani politicians are indulging in right now. I don’t care about and I am not a part of the various religious groups which are fighting their mindless and stoical wars by killing innocent people like me all over the world.

I just want to live happily. I want to love the city I live in. I wan’t to roam fearlessly in C.P. I want to believe that I will live to see my dreams fulfilled and will not be shot through my head while celebrating a friend’s birthday in a hotel or when I am at a railway station to receive a family member. Am I asking for too much? Is it too hard to achieve this? Is it too hard to stop fighting over pieces of lands, stop turning terrorism into a profession, stop waging wars in the name of religion?

Or is everything too complicated now to move it backwards? 

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