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.

Onions or Living?

My office boy has a young baby girl who has just begun to take her first few baby steps. On my way out, I see her hanging on to the gates and making baby-like noises. She is an optimist; I have not seen her cry. Yesterday on my way back from the supermarket, I bought half a dozen bananas for her. The mother was surprised, it was unexpected.

At the supermarket, I remembered the choices I had as a kid. We were just about “middle-class” but we had enough food to eat. There were baskets of mangoes, litchis and five guava trees. There were biscuits which I and my sister would hog over and sweets during every festival. Today these choices are not available to 80% of Indian poor. The onion sells at INR 75/- a kilo, tomatoes at INR 72/-. Barely edible rice is over INR 30/- A doctor’s visit costs INR 250/-. Last year, over 17000 farmers chose to die rather than plod on until their next crop-loss. Many more will die. The rickshaw-wallahs, pavement dwellers, scavengers, municipality workmen, housemaids, office boys, masons, carpenters, plumbers, and the rest of the poor, will all die. They will die of hunger, or the sheer pressure to sustain life in Indian today.

The least I could do was giving the baby half a dozen bananas.

Rajesh

Thoughts On Christmas

I came across something interesting on TV early in the morning. The swami who was preaching from the verses of the Bhagwat Gita closed his sermon wishing all viewers merry Christmas. He did not stop at that, he went on to compare the lives of Krishna and Jesus and drew some interesting parallels. Here are some of them that were  particularly thought provoking:

1. Popular figures of their times: Both Jesus and Krishna were loved by the common man on the street. One was the hero of the fisher folks the other the lord of hearts of the ordinary residents of Mathura, a town in ancient Gujarat. 
2. Immaculate Conception: Though separated by atleast 7000 years by birth, both of them are known to have had an extra ordinary birth. While Baby Krishna escaped the wrath of Kamsa to live another day, infant Jesus escaped the king's soldiers just the same.
3. Men of Miracles: Both were capable of miracles. While Krishna was widely accepted as incarnation of Vishnu and worshiped even when alive, the followers of Jesus realized his divinity the hard way... after losing him.

These parallels might not be limited to Krishna and Kristo, I am sure that the lives of all saints and Gods will always have striking similarities. What is most evident is the abundance of strife that great lives have to go through during their time of earth. The terrible intrigues, treachery and brutality that Christ had to go through when alive is quite similar to the strife, intrigue and eventually, unfortunate death that Krishna had to meet with when alive.

I take this Christmas season to remember lives of our Lords who left behind simple messages for those who loved and believed in them. Messages that the clergy complicate and the educated distort. May the spirit of mankind lighten each others souls this season.

Rajesh

You Burnt My Past!

India Burning

As I fight rational to make sense of my today and stumble forth into a future I do not know of, I look behind and hear the holler of a million innocent lives.
When you carved my nation's soul as if it were caviar on your cedar and rosewood dining tables, the wounds from that night bleeds still. You doctored my lessons, taught me an alternate history, made yourself heros and saviors of a race that could care less for you.

When I grew up, I searched the google and learnt about the murder on your souls. You taught me about Hitler but kept your own names away from me, you taught me about the freedom struggle but kept secret your absolute craving and hunger for the power over a billion poor away from me. When I grew up, I googled and learnt about the dead the buried the displaced and the lost.

When I have children, I will not sing songs of gods to them, I will sing songs of your murder and your lust, when I have grand children, I will burn MP6s and Blue Ray Discs with stories of your ahimsa f@#k! As long as I live in hatred, with blood of my brethren flowing down the indus on to the ganges, I will keep singing, I will not keep still.

Gandhi Nehru Jinnah and the Holy Queen, heroes from our yesterday, butchers of our tomorrow. May your souls rest in peace.

Rajesh

The Poor Will Remain Unemployed... Poor

I sat the whole day in interviews today. I guess I met some 65 people today, most of them from extremely poor families. Today was the first time in my last 20 years that I came across qualified ITI certificate holders (most of them having over 75% scores) who continue to work as farmers and coolies (load bearers). If I spend too much time thinking about them, I will probably get into depression. 


But there is hope. That entire hope rests on one man’s determination to change the way we Indian’s get educated. I have great belief in Kapil Sibal. I am not sure whether ten years down the line the results of planned changes will change the life of the poor who are the outcastes in this country with limited access to the entire support systems of food, education and healthcare. Whatever be the future, it cannot be worse than the present.


Honorable Sir, the hopes and wishes of a million Indians ride on you. You have the power to affect our future. We are with you. 


I also thank God for helping me by giving me birth in a family who could afford three times food and upper middle class education to their children. I wish I could help the poor someway.


Thank you God and God Bless you Mr.Minister.