THUMBS DOWN TO THE BIGGEST BOSS

“Everyone, including the children, should watch Bigg Boss and Rakhi ka insaaf,” thus spake the biggest boss of our country --- the media (and judiciary nodded in agreement).
The government cannot determine what children should see and what they should not, the media said. “Who can then?” one may ask. The answer, most definitely would be, us i.e. the media.
Call me dogmatic, call me fanatic, call me Stalinist or communist, I think the fourth estate trying to usurp the role of the other three estates is the worst thing that can happen to a democracy. Unfortunately, legislature and executive are so corrupt in India that the common man has lost faith in them. The judiciary is still held in high regard because people seldom get to know how corrupt some lawyers and judges are. As judiciary’s power is extremely limited outside the court, media has become the most revered estate. And the powers that be in the media have wasted no time in turning the “big daddy”, whose only concern is the well-being of the citizens.
The biggest responsibility of this big daddy is cleansing the system. “Politicians are so corrupt, my God! Politics should be banned in this country. The only thing politicians do is take bribes, waste taxpayers’ money and do nothing for those who make them leaders,” the newspapers write everyday in some way or the other.
They are lucky that there is nobody to expose them. Otherwise the general public could have known how many editors have reached their positions not because of their journalistic abilities but because of efficient sycophancy. One could have even written a research paper on the journalistic equivalent of the casting couch. Let somebody find out how many renowned journos are son of X, cousin of Y, nephew of Z and so on. The reams published on dynasty politics may then look like unfair criticism.
And bribes? Every second some journalist or the other is accepting a bribe in cash or in kind to malign A’s enemy or exalt B’s efforts. Even when an individual is working as an honest journalist, the owner of his channel or newspaper is making him do a story that will benefit some company or some politician who will arrange for huge ad revenue in the next fiscal. Some media houses have even institutionalised doing stories in return of something.
Having known all this, it hurts when the media criticizes the government for ordering two TV channels to telecast some programmes unsuitable for children late in the night so that least number of children get to see it. The logic behind the criticism?
a) The government cannot decide what is suitable for children and what is not.
b) Children anyway get to see a lot of vulgarity around them nowadays as a result of the moral fabric of society loosening.
Let’s discuss a) first:
Admittedly, the best judge of what is suitable for a child is its parents. But nobody’s parents are powerful enough to determine what is shown at prime time and they have every right to watch TV at prime time with their son/daughter. The people who have that power are those whom these parents have elected to the legislature. So why can’t they decide?
At this, the pundits would say: “You are defending censorship. There should not be any censorship in a progressive democracy.”
Rubbish.
There is no democracy in the world which is absolutely censorship-free. Even in the USA, if somebody is convicted of distributing “obscene” pornography, he can be sentenced to long prison term and forfeiture of assets. So which progressive democracy are you talking about?
The kind of things shown in the two programmes in question, may not amount to pornography but they will not be deemed fit for children in any civilized country.
Bigg Boss contestants hurl abuses at each other at will and the ugly fights they get involved into are mental violence at its worst.
What Rakhi Sawant does is, at times, adult content. Just the other day she called somebody “impotent” on air. The guy went home humiliated and committed suicide a few days later. Even if he had not done that, imagine your 7/8 year old daughter watching it even if you don’t watch it with her (nowadays there are times when children watch TV alone), and with the natural curiosity of that age, asking you: “What does impotent mean?”
Is that a word that should enrich her vocabulary at such an early age? If the government has said “no”, what is there to criticize? In fact, for the first time in free India, the government has not tried to ban something deemed offensive by it. It has not tried to determine what adults should see. Making certain programmes late night is as good (or as bad, if you think so) as marking a film PG (parental guidance). Why should that be regarded as an attack on the right to freedom of speech and expression?
To end this lengthy discussion, let me say that even if it is a decision the government should not take, the only possible loser are the two channels who might get less advertisements for those slots. What are the other media houses so concerned about? The answer is in my question.
Let’s come to b) now:
What a logic! My grandmom is 80 years old. She has got asthma, high blood pressure, diabetes and arthritis. Everybody knows she can die any day. So let’s shoot her. What’s the big deal?
The moral fabric is loosening everyday. So let the children lose their morality asap, or better still, let’s ensure they don’t develop any by showing them foul-mouthed celebrities jostling to win a reality show, and somebody like Rakhi, whose only achievement in life is showing off her big breasts, ask people most personal questions and wash everybody’s dirty linen in public.
But let’s not lose hope, let’s rewrite what Rabindranath Tagore had written:
Where the mind is without media and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into revenues
By voracious media moghuls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dark lanes of profit and loss
Where journalism is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening action for welfare
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

HOW HE GOT THERE

November 5, 7.30 am
“Want to earn some extra money?” teammate R asks me at breakfast table. “Extra!” I wonder. “Ya. It’ll be good. You could go for a holiday in Switzerland with the money,” he says.
“Bad joke,” I say with a smile, concentrating on my toast. “No. I’m not joking, I’m serious,” he insists. “Arre that’s a lot of money. My family hasn’t earned so much in five generations,” I laugh him off.

11 am
“Boss, you don’t have a choice. A and W have agreed. Talks are on with S and F. S will agree I’m telling you. Don’t act like a stupid. Everyone’s earning. Why should you miss out?” R tells me my room.
“What are you talking about? I don’t understand,” I tell him bluntly.
“You seriously don’t understand?” R’s surprised.
“No.”
“What a simpleton you are, Inshallah!” he says, and locks the door. “Don’t you know what the lords of the sting did? They are suspended all right but do you know how much they earned? Much more than I’m offering you.”
“I don’t do all those things. I can’t ditch my country. I won’t do all that. Besides, this is highly un-Islamic. I won’t do anything napakh,” I tell him clearly. Being a senior player, he must have thought I am a greedy young cricketer.
“Is that your last word?” R, palpably angry, asks me.
“Absolutely,” I confirm.
He sits silent for a second. Then reaches for his mobile phone and calls up somebody: “Mian, this guy is refusing… I haven’t yet told the money but he says he won’t do it for anything… Napakh and all those bogus stuff he’s saying… Ok, you come over, see if you can make him understand.”
“K is coming. He’ll tell you. You should have agreed by now. He is angry. I’m not responsible for what’s going to happen now,” says R.
I can’t believe my ears! K is into all this? I always thought cricket is his second religion. I know he’s very particular about discipline and hardwork. He doesn’t miss one namaz on non-match days. There’s a knock on the door as I am submerged in my thought. R opens it and in comes K.
“What? You think you are a saint? What’s your problem? You’ll be at the crease with the last man today. Make sure we lose. You’ll pocket $ 10,000. Extra if you drop catches or miss stumpings. Are you happy or you want more?” K shouts even before I can open my mouth.
“No, money is not the issue. I just don’t want to do it. It’s wrong, it’s immoral. You know it,” I utter with a little bit of hope that K will change his mind.
He doesn’t. He grabs my collar instead, and says: “To hell with your morality. I’m offering you jannat. Take it or I’ll show you habia dozakh. Everyone we need has come on board. If you don’t, today’s match will be the last you play for Pakistan. And don’t forget you’ll have to return to the country. Nobody will be able to save you. The man who has made this offer is very influential. You have no idea how much power he has.”
He pushes me on the bed and says: “I want your answer before the match starts. You also have to help us lose the last ODI,” and leaves. R leaves with him.
Lying on the bed, I realise what a huge trap I am in. I can’t do what they are asking me to but the way things have been set up, I can hardly stop them from doing what they want to. What to do?

2.30 pm
I have made up my mind. I have talked to my wife and brother. They’ll support me in whatever I do.

Midnight
I hit the winning runs. I have seen to it that my motherland is not sold. The way some of my colleagues looked at me told me I have hurt their cause, which means I have done the right thing.

November 6, 10 pm
I has stopped talking to me. So have the others. This atmosphere is killing me. Everybody is normal in front of the TV cameras but inside the hotel nobody is talking to me, nobody is sitting beside me. Am I somebody who has a contagious disease?

November 8, 9 am
I am scared. I have no shame in admitting that I am scared. Anybody who wants to live shall be scared in my position. I got an sms from an unknown number telling me my days on the earth are over. For not letting Pakistan lose, they are going to kill me. Where could I go? I don’t know who’s on my side, who’s to be trusted. But I know who are not on my side. So I decided to run away. I have. I have been able to fool everybody to get my passport and am on a plane to London. I know their hands are really long but I think I’ll be safer in London than in Dubai or Karachi. But I’m worried about my family. I hope they can join me safely soon.

N.B. The piece above is a piece of imagination. Likeness to any actual event is purely co-incidental.

The exception

There is no grief bigger than personal grief.
It took me a death to realise this. The country was holding its breath for the landmark judgement, a judgement that may change the course of history. But I was not holding my breath. I was not thinking about what would happen to my country, my people if for Ram people take up arms against each other once again. All I was thinking about was how my untimely widower friend would be able to restart his life after a short circuit burnt the CPU.
The biggest issue in my life right then was not the settlement of Ayodhya but the reality that my closest friend’s wife, to whom I owe a lot of my current happiness, is not there to help us out next time around. Even in death, she did me a favour. She taught me to control my emotions. I had to hold back my tears for a long time so that my friend could shed his. For the first time in my life, I realised Gautam Buddha was right. There is no grief unique, no pain biggest.
Death, this was not my first brush with you. I have seen you from closer quarters, taking my beloved uncle away bit by bit. I have slept in peace when you took away a dear grandma in the middle of the night without the slightest warning. But I never felt you lurking by my side with a silent threat of crushing my carefully built universe. That’s what you did to my friend.
“I was dreaming of becoming three from two. I ended up being one,” was what the hurt heart could say. At that very moment, I realised I didn’t lose anything paying least attention to maths lessons. Those lessons would have taught me 2+1 is always 3, without any exception. But life is exceptional, life is one and only. Death is what makes it exceptional, and he who doesn’t know the exception, is ignorant. However, this ignorance is, as usual, bliss.

Don't forgive

Sir/Madam,
Forgive us for the lies we told you to guard our friends, the lessons we didn’t memorise, the sums we couldn’t solve, the questions we answered wrong as students.
But don’t forgive us for the sins we commit as parents. We know that whatever we are in life today is because of the caning you awarded us with when we bunked classes to watch Sholay,because of the dressing down you gave us when we taunted girls at the bus stop near school. But for the fear of you reaching our homes and catching us fast asleep well past 7 am, many of us would have slept on and never done anything worthwhile in life. Some of us still remember the cold look you gave if anyone was found outside the class after the tiffin break was over.
One of us has become a revered judge, but was the most shameless liar till you caned him constantly for 15 minutes for overwriting marks on his report card. He caught fever that evening and after recovering, he never lied in his life.
One of us never understood geography. His notebooks had more fictions than facts and figures. Sitting on the last bench, he used to thrill us with stories in boring classes. One day his notebook fell in your hand and he almost peed in his pants. Next day you said: “I went through your notebook. You write well. But class is not the place to spin a yarn. If I ever find you doing that again, you’ll be rusticated.” He ended his relationship with geography with 80% marks. The man is a famous writer now. His first published story was the last one in that notebook, and he didn’t have a clue to what had happened to that small thing till you handed him the issue of the magazine which had published the story.
Our doctor friend had lost his father when he was five and his mother was a domestic help. She did not have the money to send her brilliant son to coaching classes for Joint Entrance. He would not have cleared the exam had you not given him free tuitions after school. How many times did you call him a thickhead? He does not remember. But he never forgets that he owes his career to you.
We know you don’t remember any of us as it is impossible to remember everyone whose life you have changed with your canes, cold looks, shouts, guidance and encouragement. Forgive us for our mistakes and the choicest abuses we hurled at you on your back. But don’t forgive, cane us again instead, for supporting our sons and daughters when they don’t do their homework and complain about the teacher’s behaviour if scolded.
Cane us for bringing up children in such a way that they develop an ego very early in life and commit suicide if caned by the teacher. Cane your students in the media, who always side with students in depicting teachers as villains and cane your administrator students, who think antagonising students against teachers means protecting students’ interests.
We bow to thee once again on Teacher’s Day, but with a complain. Why didn’t you teach us the mantra to be ruthlessly affectionate, the mantra that drove you all your life?

India wastes freedom

“Now, you may kiss the bride,” says the Holy man, and you are free. Free to kiss the woman whom you have always wanted to kiss. That kiss, in all likelihood, is not your first. But till then you needed to find a place where nobody can see you kissing. After that announcement, you have been granted freedom to kiss in front of everybody.
When a non-Christian gets married, the licence to kiss is not handed to him/her in as many words, but the purpose of the elaborate ritual is, indeed, to grant the couple the freedom to kiss, hug etc etc. But that freedom comes at a price. In other words, it comes with a new bondage (in the language of cynics), which means:
a) You cannot, henceforth, kiss any person you want to. You can only kiss your spouse.
b) You have to look after your spouse and the child that is born out of the marriage.
c) You cannot think only about your own interests while taking a decision. You have to take your spouse’s opinion.
If you don’t obey any of the above written or unwritten rules, the joy of a marriage will be lost. First, the kissing and hugging and so on will lose their charms, and a few months or years from then, either or both of you will go to court, asking for cancellation of the freedom to kiss each other.
Cynics call it bondage, level-headed people call it responsibility. The fact remains, to have some kind of freedom, you have to give up some other kind of freedom. So when we, the Indians, drove the Queen’s men out of our country, we took up a huge responsibility. That, it seems, did not dawn on our leaders. Somehow they were under the impression that everything will fall into place, no effort is needed. Given our history of propagating fatalist philosophies, you can hardly fault them.
So even before the country was free, our leaders started fighting over who will get how much share of the power. When they could not find a clear winner or come to a consensus, they decided to cut the country into halves and distribute it among themselves. The father of the nation, who was famous for going on a hunger strike whenever the country didn’t listen to him, had perhaps lost his appetite by then and thought: “No point going on a hunger strike, I’m not eating much anyway!” Rest is shameful history.
We were given partitioned freedom. What a freedom! One fine morning, some Bengalis (and Punjabis) were told: “You are free but this land you are standing on is not your country. So pack up fast and go over to that side of the border. That’s your country.”
There they were, men who had a home and enough to maintain their families when they were not free, and penniless with no place to live after becoming free. They crossed the border on foot with families in tow. The 10-year-old sons died on the way because a doctor could not be found when the fever went out of control, the teen-aged daughters were snatched away, and then, on the platforms of Sealdah station and other refugee camps, they had to stay up all night so that the same doesn’t happen to their wives. This is real freedom, isn’t it? Everybody is free to do whatever he likes!
Hail the human spirit! People changed the times, people found homes, rebuilt their lives. Sixty-three years passed but the leaders have not changed. They are still concerned about power. The corrupt ones use it to become richer and the honest ones are not competent enough to do anything good.
And nobody accepts responsibility.
Case I: A multi-national company comes to the country, makes an unsafe plant, gas leaks, thousands are dead. The chief comes to the country, and is escorted out instead of being arrested. Decades later, the then chief minister of the state, after being found out, takes the easiest way out, saying the then union home minister, who is now dead, had pressurised him. “The then Prime Minister was innocent,” he adds. Of course. In that case the home minister was working on his own. That means the PM was an incompetent fool, couldn’t even control his own cabinet.
Case II: The country is organising a big sporting event. The organising committee’s corruption is exposed and the government avoids the responsibility of organisation. The head of the committee is a leader of the ruling party but neither the top leader of his party nor the PM, who is supposed to be a top-to-bottom honest man, asks that crook to resign. Moreover, the sports minister tells MPs they should file RTI applications if they want to know the truth about the scam.
Case III: Maoists are killing innocent people by damaging rail tracks. The railway minister says they have not done it. She even says military operations against them should stop. Not only that, she says the Maoist leader who has been killed by the joint forces was “murdered”, as if those who died in the train accident were not murdered. All this she does without being even verbally reprimanded by the PM. How can he do that? After all, she is an important ally.
It’s a free country, free-for-all. Nobody has any responsibility. We, the people of India, only have vulnerability.

Left Front government: In Memoriam

The Left Front government in West Bengal, by all means, is on its way out. The body language of the opposition leader, the ministers, the officials, most importantly, the voters suggests so. I am trying to look back on the Left rule, not in anger but with my fulfilled and unfulfilled desires.
On June 21, 1977, when Left Front came to power, I was a just a beautiful dream, in the hearts of my then unmarried parents. In fact, my father’s bigger dream at that point of time was of making a new Bengal. During the previous government’s rule, he had to go through a lot of torture for being a member of Communist Party of India (Marxist). He, like many of his comrades, didn’t bow under that pressure and continued the movement. Therefore, when Jyoti Basu and his cabinet were sworn in, it was not just the party’s victory, it was also a personal victory for party members like him.
The thing about that generation of Communists was, they had an even bigger dream – of revolution. Those were the days of Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia et al. The Left Front government, therefore, had the task of not only providing better governance than the previous Congress government but also governing so well that people in other parts of India would think Communists should be in power all over the country.
Having declared long ago that they believe revolution can be achieved through Parliamentary democracy, that was to be CPI(M)’s path to revolution. This is revolution not in the Leninist sense, but in the Gramscian sense. Besides, Left Front was not just CPI(M), it was a conglomerate of like-minded parties.
The first step towards achieving those goals was, as it should have been, revolutionising the villages of Bengal. So Basu’s government, under the leadership of land reforms minister Benoy Chowdhury, pursued the agenda of giving land to sharecroppers. ‘Operation Barga’ had a huge success in economically empowering the poor of rural Bengal. The next step was giving political power to them. To do that, the government set up a three-tier panchayat system.
In 1982, when I was born, the panchayat movement was taking shape. My father was at the forefront. He won the election and was given charge of a panchayat samity (the middle tier). Back then, CPI(M) was not a pack of just middle-aged and old men. My father became the sabhapati at the age of 33. Today, when the fashion is to say: “Left Front has done nothing for Bengal,” I would beg to differ.
What surely remained neglected under the Left rule is Kolkata. But my country lives in villages. And I don’t want development like Hyderabad, where the city is plush but is filled with beggars who come from the outskirts and villages, for they have no choice. The areas that didn’t get the benefits of Operation Barga and panchayati raj are the tribal areas, hence the Maoists. But let the biggest political analyst, the most knowledgible economist and the most brilliant statistician come and tell me this government has done nothing for even rural Bengal. I’ll show them how the housemaid has become administrator, how the rickshaw puller has started talking on even terms with the rich and middle class rider.
Why then, one might ask, has this government lost its popularity even among the rural voters?
First, people have lost faith in comrades. Nowadays, when a party member tells a farmer: “Give up your land for the factory, you’ll get good compensation and your son will get a job there. You’re not getting enough out of that small piece of land anyway,” the farmer instantly believes the man is lying even if he is not. That is because this farmer knows how that crook uses his affiliation to the ruling party to run all kinds of murky business. Corruption, in a word, has detached the party from the poor.
Second, the heady smell of power has made dictators out of comrades. This is true at all levels. The panchayat member at Shashan and the chief minister share the same sentiments. They forgot long time ago that they are in power by the grace of the people. The secretary of the local committee thinks he can say whatever he likes, can do whatever he thinks should be done, and people will not say anything. His top boss Biman Bose, sitting in Kolkata, thinks he can abuse even a High Court judge and yet people will support his party. People don’t say anything, they just vote, against the Left.
Third, a result of the first two - bad governance. When the ruling party is corrupt and conceited, how can it provide good governance? Even the panchayat system has turned into a machinery of oppression.
Talking about my fulfilled desires, there aren’t any. I had two ambitions. First, and this I have always kept a secret, I wanted to become a full-time party worker. I wanted to become a journalist in case I could not become worthy of the Communist party. I could not, it seems. I had joined the Students Federation of India to learn politics but I pulled out. Why? I realised my leaders knew less than me. Most of them have never read the Communist Manifesto. Some of them don’t even know the spelling of Marx, and they would take any Tom, Dick and Harry under their wings, even if they are pathologically anti-Left.
Unfulfilled desires? Many. Revolution in India, at least a Communist-led government at the centre, Bakreswar Thermal Power Project, rendering Mamata Banerjee meaningless etc. Let those be unfulfilled. As a Communist at heart, I wish this Left Front government is removed. Without tragedy there can be no catharsis.

P.S. My father gave up his administrative post in the late ’90s to concentrate on party organisation. Little did he realise that nobody around him was interested in the party, because money is where power is, not where organisation is. With such comrades around, who needs bourgeois?

To Messi With Love

Dear Lio,
Everybody thought I would cry after our loss to Germany in the World Cup quarter-final, like I did after the Germans rode an unfair penalty to beat us in the 1990 World Cup final. But I held back my tears. Not because I wanted to show the world that I am not the same Diego Maradona, to whom win was a matter of life and death. I didn’t want to prove that now I am a real 50-year old. The truth is, loss is still painful for me, I am still as passionate about football as I was in 1990. I did cry, but not in the stadium. Do you know why?
I know there are people who feel the pain whenever I lose or my team loses. There are people who have never seen me in person but treat me like a family member. They have cried for me after that loss in Cape Town. More would have cried had I cried. But I wasn’t thinking about them when I decided not to show my emotions. Neither did I think about what Dalma and Giannina would do if I cry. It didn’t matter, because they cried, they do every time they feel their dad has lost a battle -- be it against drugs, against critics or on the field against the opponents.
It was you, Lio, whom I didn’t want to see crying. I knew you would break down if I break down. No Lio, not so early. I cried after the 1990 final because I knew I may never get another chance to win the World Cup. But believe me, that’s not the case with you. And that is why I didn’t want you to cry before the TV cameras. No, I don’t want the world to know that Lionel Messi is vulnerable. I want Argentina’s enemies to know that Messi’s team can lose, he cannot.
The first time I saw you grab the ball with your left foot, and dodge past one, two, three players, I knew God has sent my successor. During this World Cup, every time your shot hit the post, went just wide or a defender fouled you, my heart lost a beat. I always knew my country’s walls are not strong enough to keep European aggressors at bay. I knew Burdisso and Demichelis are not good enough stones to build an unbreakable wall. I even knew the limitations of my midfield marshals – Mascherano, Di Maria et al. They are mere mortals, as good or as bad as the Oezils and the Schweinsteigers. My faith in Tevez and Higuain were not misplaced but my inner eye had told me long time ago that they are no better than Burruchaga, they need you to provide the balls. You, Lio, it was you who could make my Argentina a team from the heavens. But you could not.
I was ready to hand over the crown of the Crown Prince of football. You fell short. When your time came, your left foot failed you, your teammates failed you. They just did not know how to assist the son of God. But Lio, isn’t it human not to understand somebody superhuman? Your failure at Green Point only showed you are still the little son of football’s Almighty, you are still not the God.
The more I see of you, the more I am reminded of myself. On that July 3 evening, Lio, my Lio, you were looking just like me -- lost, sorry, worried, as I was in 1982 when I lost my cool, was sent off and had to see Argentina knocked out of the World Cup, from the sidelines. I was not yet the God.
In the next four years, I learnt to rise above the dirty tackles, to provide passes from which mortal strikers cannot but score and to attack, attack so much that my fragile defence can have a sound sleep. Now is your time. Stars will come and go, Lio, but you have to be the North star. The God of football wants so. He has given you his brush to paint grounds in your own way and his dearest daughter, the Golden fairy, has chosen Spain as her home for the next four years. She wanted to stay close to you, God granted her wish. On your way back to Barcelona, go to Madrid, have a look at her. You’ll know she’s dying to give in to your charms, to dance with you, to kiss you.
But you have to earn her embrace. I know her well. She was my muse in the 1980s. Now she is a sweet little darling, just like my Dalma, and Giannina. That is the only thing that has changed in my life. Now, like every other dad, I want my cutie to walk down the aisle with my favourite star, the North star. Let others say whatever they think, I know you are the One, Lio. So don’t cry, store your tears. I’ll prepare the groom’s suit, you come with the shoes, and become worthy of the bride. You have four years. After you get married in Rio de Janeiro, we’ll shed our tears together.
Yours,
Diego.

Cup of convenience

Yes, we are football fans. It doesn’t matter that our country has never ranked among the top-100 in world football. It doesn’t matter that once beating Japan and Korea was not much of a task for our footballers and today those sides are playing World Cup while we cannot even dare to dream about reaching that stage. Nobody can deny that we can rise above ourselves and support other countries in the World Cup forgetting all differences (but we can never forget that Hindus and Muslims are different, Brahmins are a class apart). We can not only forget all differences for the World Cup, we can forget everything else. Our forgetfulness for this one month every four years serves criminal politicians well.
Following are two crimes we have read about in newspapers, heard about on TV and have forgotten quickly to drink World Cup to the lees:

COPS SAW OFF WARREN WITH SALUTES: PILOT
RASHEED KIDWAI
Bhopal: Warren Anderson made his escape from Indian law in a hail of salutes from senior Bhopal police officers and fell into a peaceful slumber during his 90-minute flight to Delhi on a state aircraft.
One of the two pilots, Captain D.C. Sondhi, told The Telegraph the police officers repeatedly offered to carry the American’s hand luggage as they escorted him to the plane at Bhopal airport.
“Memories of that scene still make me angry,” said Sondhi, 72. “Here was a man responsible for the death of thousands, and our government officials were saluting him!”
He added: “The buzz among bureaucrats was that US President Ronald Reagan had spoken to someone important in India to get Anderson out quickly.”
The Union Carbide chief was arrested at Bhopal airport when he arrived four days after the 1984 gas leak that killed at least 15,000, but was let off within hours after an unidentified top government leader in Delhi made a call to chief minister Arjun Singh.
During his six-hour stay in Bhopal, Anderson, who wore a mask, appeared casual and showed “signs of arrogance”, said Moti Singh, who was then Bhopal district collector. But the American piped down when he was told he was being released.
“At first he wasn’t even willing to leave Bhopal, he wanted to see the affected area. I told him, ‘You are not welcome, you have to leave Bhopal’. I also told him there was a risk to his life and in no case could he be allowed to go to the affected areas,” Singh said.
Captain Sondhi, then director of aviation in Bhopal, received the call from Arjun Singh’s office at 2.30pm.
“I was asked to get the state government plane, a B-200 Super King, ready. Soon, city superintendent Swaraj Puri arrived with Anderson,” Sondhi said.
“Anderson was carrying a garment box (containing a business suit) and a briefcase. I remember police officers repeatedly requesting him to let them carry these pieces of luggage. Anderson said, ‘No, no, I will carry them myself.’ When the plane was about to take off, the officers saluted him and wished him good luck.”
The other pilot, Captain Syed Hasan Ali, remembers Anderson dozing off mid-flight. “He was calm but in a hurry to reach Delhi,” said Ali, whose father had become ill after the gas leak.
“My relatives lived in the Jahangirabad locality, a short distance from the Carbide factory, so none of them was grievously affected. My father died shortly after, and I am still not sure whether it was because of the gas or just his age.”
“For me, he was like any other passenger. I was doing a job and the thought that he was leaving, never to return, did not occur to me. In any case, what could I have done?”
Ali said that when Anderson got off at Delhi’s Palam airport, he made it a point to thank the crew. “He shook our hands and waved at some officials who appeared to be from the US embassy. Then, suddenly, he was gone.”
Yet, earlier in the morning, the state government had appeared serious about cracking down on Carbide and Anderson.
Collector Singh recalled: “I was summoned by Arjun Singh to his residence at 8am. He told me Anderson would be arriving in Bhopal shortly and that airport officials had been told not to let his plane land till I (Moti Singh) had arrived there.”
By the time Singh reached the airport the plane had landed but its door had not been opened. Inside, Anderson was waiting with Union Carbide India chairman Keshub Mahindra and managing director Vijay Gokhale.
Singh said all three were arrested as soon as they got off the plane and taken to Carbide’s Shyamala Hills guesthouse. The police filed a case of culpable homicide against them.
“But at 2pm, chief secretary Brahm Swaroop called me and superintendent Puri to his office. He told us a plane was waiting for Anderson and asked us to complete the formalities to ensure he could fly to Delhi as soon as possible,” Singh said.
“We quickly arranged for a Carbide employee to secure his bail against a surety of Rs 25,000.”
Singh said he was struck by Anderson’s knowledge about the plant and the sequence of events following the leak. “He told me that when the gas leaked there was no wind, so the gas went up initially; but around midnight, a southerly wind started blowing and spread the gas around.”
The Telegraph (June 9)

CBI UNEARTHS HUGE SCAM IN RAILWAY RECRUITMENT
Rahul Tripathi
New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday unearthed multi-crore scam related to recruitment in railways, exposing a major hole in what was touted as a failsafe scheme for appointments by the country’s largest employer.
Those who have been nabbed include the son of S M Sharma, chairman of the Railway Recruitment Board, Mumbai, who used the huge funds acquired by leaking exam papers to buy a Mitsubishi Pajero. The other accused are A K Jagannathan, former assistant divisional rail manager, and his son Srujan.
Railway Recruitment Boards — in all 20 — are responsible for recruiting around 50,000 employees for jobs, including drivers, guards and assistant station masters having a direct bearing for the safety of passengers. RRB SCAM Candidates paid Rs 3.5L for rly job.
The Times of India (June 19)
R.I.P consciousness.

Why I am what I am

When I was falling in and out of love, I did not know that I’ll be able to laugh off those relationships a few years later. If some of my friends suggested so, I would become very angry. Little did I realise that I had actually fallen in love with my loneliness, my failure to woo any girl. I was the quintessential Devdas, whose problem is not that nobody loves him. The problem is he loves being forlorn, rejected.

Whoever wrote the script of my life, loved me more than Sarat Chandra loved his hero. My Devdas days got over just before I was about to drown my sorrow in alcohol. I do not believe in angels, but I think human beings imagined there were angels because they found there were some among themselves whose virtues were unusual. That way, the woman I found was an angel.

The start of our affair was too true to believe. Since childhood, we had lived close enough to cross ways everyday, but never did. Then when we finally found each other, we were 1000 miles apart. But for the intelligent box that has almost thrown the idiot box out of fashion, we would never have met. I was most reluctant to join any social networking site when it was in vogue among my friends. But at last, peer pressure got to me, thankfully. I became ‘Orkuchute’, as I would call everybody who joined Orkut before me. Then came the 7th December 2007.

The most important dates to me are as follows: 7th November, 1917; 14th July 1789; 25th Boishakh 1268; 15th August 1947 and 7th December 2007. Sounds funny? I am serious. What I am today is because of all these dates. My philosophy of life is because of the Russian Revolution and the French Revolution, my expressions have flowed from Rabindranath Tagore, my freedom of speech is because my country is free, and I am not an alcoholic because of the lady I met on Orkut on 7th December. She blew away my despair, first unconsciously and later consciously. A few years later, she decided it was not enough, she should be by my side for the rest of our lives.

This piece is a tribute to that angel as I embark on a new journey. A journey to make my opinions on everything public.