Make 2013 Year of Rape Convictions

Rape is not a new crime. Its gets reported consistently. Many never do. Some make it to the front page, some times in the crime pages, some times, just a footnote buried in the city pages. It happens across various parts of the country, socio-economic groups, age groups, day or night - irrespective of what the woman wore. The politicians take easy way (of being populist?) and hide behind the patriarchal set up and let things be. The Tehelka report on police stupidity and insensitivity is epic. Basically, better to pass the blame elsewhere. Worse, to the victim.

There is some discussion in the Parliament sparked by the Delhi Gang Rape. Keeping my fingers crossed with some effective, constructive, implementable solution to come out. 

We need to make 2013 Year of Rape Convictions.

The Home dept and Supreme court MUST pass an instruction to all the district courts in the country to have AT LEAST ONE JUDGEMENT per day per court in 2013. 

Of the 30 million pending cases, prioritise the rape cases and start a separate bench to clear the rape cases. We just need one judge per court to work 365 days to bring a huge social change. After a speedy and fair trial, 365 rape cases will be closed in one year in every district and high court in the country. So, in one swift move approximately over 2 lakh cases can be resolved. 

Once we have that amount of convictions in the country, the potential rapists will think hundred time before any mischief. And the media too has to give it adequate coverage, like it does to the crime. In all fairness, daily one picture of the convict and the punishment given to him should be splashed across all newspapers and audio visual media.

PS: There was a Phoolan who was gang raped. She got her vengeance by picking up arms. If this poor conviction rate prevails, i wont be surprised if more women choose arms over the legal system. There will be anarchy and situation will truly get out of control.

For the sporting spirit of the nation

The flavour of the season is the Independence day after the Olympic games, and this blog is for sports in India. Take a look around. We are not a sporting nation. I am going to list a few solutions to improve our sporting performance at the international games. Hope you can contribute too...

After school where it is mandatory to do some physical exercises, most of us drop sports in college. In my graduation batch of over 350 students, there was one long distance runner, two badminton players, few girls in the hockey team and two of us in the basketball team. While we toiled on the ground and court, the others were busy doing tuition for MBA exams, getting to know the other gender, or killing time at the cafe near college. By the time i finished my post graduation, i had stopped playing basketball completely and was running once in a blue moon. Once i started working, there was absolutely no room for sports! I am sure this is the case for most of us. We are active on the sports field till we are 18-20 yrs old and then life is 100% work. It was only a year back at work i started playing table tennis at work, and then football on few weekends and now swim regularly. Happy realisation, i must say!
(PS: Playing cricket on sunday morning doesnt count. Cricket isn't an Olympic sport.)

We don't watch sports. We don't support sports. For any performer, other than the rush from the performance, a solid high comes from the crowd support. The adulation. The fans. Those who cheer. Unfortunately, same story repeats with the annual sports day which has an packed audience. Once school is over, no one comes to cheer, no other sport meets are supported by spectators. There might be one odd wrestling meet that some politician will sponsor and get major footfalls. Or like the annual football tournament in Kolhapur. 

The pressure to grow up is another killer. I remember my grandfather asking me to stop playing and help in domestic chores - fill and ferry buckets of water. My father told me to act my age - and focus on studies, get a job, start working. There are hundreds of my friends who were good at sports in school. We even had a senior at school who ran 100mts under 13 secs. I can proudly say that each one of my batch mates has represented the school / state in west zone and national level in various team sports, track n field games. As of now, except for those in the Armed forces, i wonder if any of them even has a pair of running shoes! Expectation to be "grown up" and "act our age" unfortunately equals to giving up sports.

For a vast majority the urbanisation of the last decade has led to disappearance of playgrounds. There was a time when the grounds were walking distance from home. Now with buildings running for kilometers together, there are no open spaces. We once went to play at a ground nearby. If you are fielding at long on, you are next to the wicket keeper for some other chaps playing cricket. You don't know which direction the ball is going to hit you from! Our urban planners need to push for some policy change where open spaces, where people can play some sport, pursue some game.

There are several issues plaguing our sports, and a lot of them are non-sports related. They are cultural problems and hopefully we can address them holistically. And please take a break and be little objective before foolishly forwarding smses that talk about Olympic performance of 1.2 billion strong country. Criticism ever helps. Only those who are internationally accomplished have the right to comment on the performance of the athletes. 

Gold medals will follow. Let us start playing first! So we can understand the sport, appreciate the sport.

Diving in the pool

I have started swimming at a public pool near my house. Its a fairly popular pool, where a mix of people come to get exercise, learn swimming, or just to beat the summer heat. There are hourly batches, but since i am the way i am, i have managed to go across all time bands in the morning hours.
The way kids who are learning are treated stands out sorely and i said to myself, this isn't working, its not right. You will imagine that swimming coaches will have better people skills, especially while dealing with kids who will break into their worst crying sounds. I  realised we are years away from ways to train the trainers! And in my little hypothesis, i think our rote system of schooling is to blame. The teacher says, do this and you obediently do it. No thinking there. This goes on in most aspects of life too. Parents, elders, swimming coaches in this instance.
In each batch, there will be one kid who is learning how to dive in the water. There will be the coach in water, reassuring the kid to jump and there will be a parent who will be breathing down the kids neck to jump in. There are verbal instructions - keep the head between knees, fling yourself hands stretched out, bend this way, jump that way... The instructions don't stop despite the kid diving flat on the water and hurting his / her stomach.
The rote education system relies on the child capturing / retaining based on repeat. At the pool, i think the coach (and the unnecessary parent), hope the diver will learn thru trial and error. No one is thinking of actually teaching the kid how to dive.
There is an out of the box solution and i will try it this week. 
Everybody has a phone with video camera and enough memory space. Record the kid when he / she is jumping and show them what they are doing wrong when going thru video together. Give specific instructions. Compare videos on youtube. 
Yes, there will be some privacy issues. Of course, there will be people who will be uncomfortable. However, if a corner is kept for this mobile camera and those who don't want to get shot stay away, i don't think anyone else should have a problem. Alternatively, the pool representative can be trusted to shoot and delete the clips on daily basis.
Learning has to happen outside of conventional means. We are stuck with unimaginative education system, but we don't have to live with it all our lives.

Story of the River and the Mountain

A friend wanted a piece on my days in Ladakh for a travel issue. Never saw the light of the day. Thought i will share with you all - the tipping point being an interesting workshop i attended this weekend with these guys: http://redwisdom.in/Events/LifePurpose.aspx

To put simply the stuff from the workshop - We delete stuff from the computer and it lands in the recycle bin. If the accumulated stuff isnt deleted, then the machine becomes slow. Similarly, in our lives we sweep aside some issues, memories, unpleasant moments in the mental recycle bin. Ever emptied that?

Do get in touch with these folks if you want some clarity of thought.

= = = = =

It was 2004 and it was my professional nadir. I thought the feeling will pass, and was learning to live with hopelessness. 

Lucky for me, one email changed my life. A friend wrote in to share his experiences about a NGO that worked in the field of education from Phey village, near Leh in Ladakh. Well, when you gotta go, you gotta go, and after few email exchanges with the administrator of the NGO, on a frozen winter morning i found myself at the Leh airport. Frankly, they didn't expect that i would actually show up! My senses were numbed by the cold. It snowed that evening. Nice flaky white snow. The temperature dropped to minus 24 overnight. I couldn't feel my nose, face, hands - and i was wearing 7 layers of clothing. In sub zero temperature i made it to be campus on a mini bus with a continuous mountain on one side and the mighty Indus, deep down, flowing along the road on the other side.

The SECMOL campus is situated at a curve in the mighty Indus, with really huge and imposing mountains on all sides. The interplay between the mountains and the river played the most important role in my 8 months stay on campus. The mountains making you feel totally insignificant and the mesmerising river challenging you, gushing forth.

The changing seasons have a marvelous effect on these two mighty forces of nature. It is a spectacle for everyone to see and enjoy. In the winter months, the mountain tops were snow white, the river was sluggish with icy cold water and frost formations on river bank that didnt get sunlight. Just to go and sit near the river was an experience in itself. With spring, as the mountain snow started melting, the river water turned muddy. The pace and depth of the river increased. There was sunshine and shrubs were coming around. Small springs came alive with sparkling water all over the landscape. Cattle ventured outside. Summer was the most interesting month though. With maximum temperature touching 20 degree Celsius, this was most certainly the coldest summer of my life! The brown mountain tops were visible now and the Indus gushed with life, flowing with a mad energy. At the corner where the river turns and slows, we did the annual linen and curtains laundry and went to play in the water. And before we knew it, the first snowfall happened in October. The winter was underway. The mountains went back to wearing white robes. The river slowed down.

There is a constant tension between the mountain and the river. The dichotomy - of immovable, huge mountains and the always flowing river - living in the vast nothingness of Ladakh. Many million centuries back, the mountains must have stopped the river and the river would have chipped the mountains and made way. What a wonderful love-hate relationship they must share! The lifeless, cold mountains - a solid testimony for stability in life. To stand by your principles, to be on guard all the time, to be firm in all seasons. The lively river - running along constantly, seeing new lands, living in the suspense of some unknown culmination.

I had similar issues in my professional slump that time. Was i happy with stability or did i want to go on a journey of discovery? Was there satisfaction in staying in a comfort zone or should every moment be lived in search of the unknown? Is there joy in watching life go by or an adrenaline rush that comes with uncertainty? Every moment and minute, each hour, day, month and year, the mountain sees the river travel over itself, flirting with his foothills, running desperately to the vast unknown. Does it not get tempted to join the glorious dance of the river? How dearly the river must have wanted to stop flowing, so it doesn't lose its existence by joining the ocean?

Every time i saw the amazing spectacle in front of me, playing out non-stop in a synchronised symphony, i wondered which of these two ways was right to live. Each passing moment the never ending romance of the mountain and the river made me question myself, the choices i made, the life i lived and the path i wanted to walk on. Yes, the river took some part of the mountain as the snow melted and the mountain kept some moisture of the river in its heart, but that didnt change the very nature of either the mountain or the river. Some silt flowed all the way to the river bed and some water trickled into the roots of flora on the mountain slopes. The essence of their identity was never lost.

The mountain and river merely reflected the struggle within me - who am i and what do i want to be. Confused between two levels of existence, both offering a life choice. As the muddy water of Indus cleared after spring, i figured out we are destined to remain who we are. We are born as mountains or rivers. A rock solid person can never flow like a river. Someone living like a carefree river cannot appreciate a stable life. The temptation to join hands and the repulsion of a strange life, forever play games with our hearts and minds. However steadfast we are in our lives and there will be an opportunity to go on a journey in to the unknown. We can be born nomadic and yet, live every moment with a solid sense of purpose.

Knowing the path and walking the path, are two very different things. No matter who you are, and where you want to go, unless you start believing. A journey to find who you are  - mountain or river - and what you make on your path, is the most joyous one. Make that little effort, and look beyond.

Good luck and happy journey!

Its all in the family!

I was very surprised to read that Didi has banned fraternizing of TMC members with the CPM comrades. Think about it - no friendships, no talking at tea stall, no marrying, or attending functions and all that.
Politics makes the strangest bedfellows and in the day and age of coalition politics, for her to take a stance like this, is very illogical. Cant say what the motive is, but know for sure that loyalties dont run so deep anymore.
The Rajas who took to politics post-independence showed some old world loyalty. However, the following generations picked up the rules of the new game pretty soon. With so much wind fall with power seats, it was important to keep the wealth "in the family." 
We are the land of people who play safe. We love the idea of democracy but we are the biggest oligarchy, where families rule and money rolls within the few heads of families. Well, its either thru marriage or alliances or joint ventures.
I remember one election where mother, eldest son and bahu (married to younger son) contesting elections from three different parties! no matter who wins, the power, decisions, money - stay in the family. Yes, there are acidic speeches and venomous attacks on each other. But at the end of the day, they all have dinner on the same table. And we all know, the family that eats together, stays together :)
There is nothing called bholi-nadaan janata either. People get govts they deserve. The safety of bringing to power those who have experience in the dealings and workings of power corridors, is much better than to elect a new comer. 
We are completely and totally fascinated by the past and till we let go of it, we will never have a future. Likewise with Didi. She is so stifled with her past, that everything she does, HAS to be in relation to CPM. Till she lets go of her "opposition" mentality, she cannot be a leader who will bring in change.
In Marathi we have a proverb, which loosely means that a bull tied to a piece of wood sunk in the ground, will roam only in the area the rope allows it.
PS: Yes, its a very confused post. I know. Been a long time since i wrote, so had to just get down and write something.

old memory

this video is from a past life that i had almost forgotten. i thought i had lost the video as i changed many phones since. this was the zee international team party @ aarey, goregaon. i dont know what got into me, but i downed the entire beer bottle in 30 secs!
well, those were the times when i didnt have to worry abt "battle of the bulge."

Fiefdom v/s Freedom

Decision making has always remained a function of a select group. It always will. However, the amount of shame i feel when crores of citizens, more or less are in agreement to have scion after scion take over the mantle of democracy, can clearly be attributed as a failure of Indian democracy. This is Fiefdom, not Democracy.

Democratic process and / or putting democracy in practice remains an unfulfilled dream in present day India. Going back in history, as Indians came together to fight for independence, under INC or by the call of Satyagraha or even the Socialist and Extremist version - they were busy putting pressure on the Brits by various means. The sole motive was to gain / win independence. A quasi democratic process had been operational with local representation but in no way had it filtered down. It was a non-inclusive domain of educated elite, erstwhile Raja's etc.

What will we do once we get freedom was never thought, debated, pondered, imagined. The transition from kings and thakurs and small mai-baap role serfs, to East India Company and Brits taking over almost every arm of administration and executive, and uniting us - and then the events leading to freedom was the most damaging thing. In hindsight, we will never know if we had united on our own against the Brits, what would have happened. But thats another topic altogether...

What the system before-angrez and after-angrez hasn't done for us, is "change the approach to life". The dependency and looking up, instead of stepping up and taking responsibility, shows in almost every aspect of our lives. Look around you - there always is only a small group of people making decisions. The cabinet decides whats best; the planning commission chooses the way ahead; the board of directors makes business decisions; the patriarch decides how his family should lead their lives. So on and so forth.

The tragedy is, we need constant role modelling and someone to tell us what to do and what is best for us.
When i started writing this blog, i was hoping to do some reflection on crown prince Rahul, but as the events unfold, i am thinking more and more abt lakhs of people who were swayed by the Team Anna anti-corruption movement.

Is it to be blamed to the rote factor in education system that discourages creative n liberal thinking? Perhaps. Does it make us risk averse? Yes! What about staying away from politics and policy making? Who made it a family business? Why did we allow it? Were politicians always untrustworthy or was there a different breed who actually had a vision? Did someone make a condescending decision that "local self government" will never work?

Are we good enough just for executing? Look at the IT sector. Hardly any research happens in India. We send so many workers to middle east - they are mostly manual labour. The number of patents filed in India is nowhere close to countries of similar size and education levels. How many technical graduates, MBAs and such set up businesses and create employment? Look at your own batch and you will get a fair estimate.

Maybe the time has come for the fiefdom to "let go". The 0.5% folks who run the show, can continue to make decisions that affect the top. The elite who have been guiding us, can continue to guide. Let democracy function, in its true chaotic form. Yes, there will be some anarchy for some time. Let people make decisions. With authority, give people autonomy and accountability. When people make mistakes, they learn. Maybe the general intelligence of the average Indian is low, but the survival instinct is strong, the desire to change lives is peaking. When more and more people get educated, employed, and have spending power, they want to fly. With restrictions that growth will not happen. When the forces of change clash with the power centre, one of them will have to give way.

Imagine a pyramid who has a very broad base and tapers with even 60 degrees till the middle. And then, suddenly, its a narrow column thats just putting pressure on one point. That point is the middle class. Second generation educated kids, who are patriotic, who dutifully pay taxes, who give to charity, who have dreams of making a difference.

Will the fiefdom relent? 2012 will tell.

The Metallica concert

I have been meaning to put pics from the Metallica concert on the blog for a long long time - since 30 Oct 2010 - actually... And am getting around to it only now!!
Well, such is life. You get opportunities to re-live some moments again.

Before we started, hoping Delhi doesn't repeat.

The largest gathering of black tee shirts

Black sea @ Palace grounds

The waiting before Biffy Clyro opened

The two most "protected from the mob" people

Yes, it was raining and we still made space to pose!

Thats Biffy Clyro in action. Very groovy metal.

This fellow jumped into the area between compartments. When i called him, "Gurgaon wale bhai sahab", he was offended.

Another loser who jumped sections and blocked view for everyone else.

Thats how view is blocked when people jump sections.

Wave of happiness

Finale

Final Pyro