Friday, December 28, 2012

Look Ma, Pa is killing the kids

I think we are just to many of us. The last I read, one in ten denizens of this world lives in India. Maybe this is why as a nation we encourage more of our countrymen to die like dogs everyday. For a casual onlooker, it will be hard to see through this veil of English speaking media and urban middle class slumber. You have to look closer and then you will see the gross death that lurks all around us. The problem is far greater than one well covered and highlighted rape. In India, your gender does not matter, you are raped anyways.

Consider this, our roads kill about 17 Indians every hour and maims twice as many. The Gau Mata probably will account for some of these deaths and the rest are by trucks parked on highways, trucks coming in opposite directions on a the 6 lane highway to avoid taking a larger round about, drunk drivers and villages playing Russian roulette with their lives on the road etc. Some bit of death might also be due to speeding in the absence of policing and step curves around precipices without barricades. Then there is the poorly designed automobiles that use live Indians as tests subjects and Indian roads as test track.

More death happen due to gross neglect and apathy of officials in our hospitals than due to lack of facilities. The open municipality sewers and drainage breeds the same mosquitos we blame for Dengue deaths.

The pollutants from our big industries and pesticides poison our ground water and then we blame the Cola companies for contaminating mothers milk. This ground water kills us slowly, through cancer and fluorosis and numerous other exotic mutating diseases.

In this land of plenty, the food grains produced by our poor farmers are procured through an annual charade and then left to rot in open yards and leaking granaries. The poor die of cold and hunger and gross disrespect everyday in my nation. Those whom the country's elected and the bureaucrats don't kill with their apathy die out of the insult of having born in this wonderful land at this point in time.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

39

It is done.
My mom called it in
My sisters sang
FB and Whatsapp confirmed it
My colleagues cut a cake and celebrated it
I am 39 and that is it.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Changing Lanes

I can see your blinking lights
I have felt the change in speed
At every turn and every bump
The distance have increased

Would you as you make that turn
Slow down a second and bid adieu
A casual wave of hands will do
A fleeting glance my way will do.

The roads in our lives have twists and turns
And they crisscross in mysterious waves
One running into the other
The other running into yet another
And together, they form our web of life
And hold us captive till we die.

We will meet again my love
There are no permanent goodbyes