Horizons - Filled with Hope

I was thumbing through a back issue of Reader’s Digest. An article that eventually caught my attention shocked me like nothing before. The article was about the child flesh trade in Cambodia. The author of the article was a journalist in disguise. He masqueraded as a “customer” and must have been utterly shocked at what he witnessed.

There is supposed to be a “belief” in South-East Asia that sex with a virgin child is the “cure” for impotency and also that it “enhances” the potency. Apparently, the younger the child, the more the “healing power” or whatever and the more the money people are ready to pay for it. I was moved to tears on reading that children as young as 6 years old are offered in this trade. First of all, some village girls are lured to the cities with promise of good jobs. Then, they finally end up in this net after running out of options. Most of them don’t even return home because they know they will not be accepted back by their families.

By the time the girls reach an age of 12, they are oblivious to the childhood that they are missing out on. At an age when they should be playing in the grounds and attending school, they are satisfying the needs of cold-blooded monsters. This is the only life that they know of. They are unaware of the fact that most of them will never make it past the age of mid-30’s. AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases are rampant.

The Government has supposedly done a lot to clamp down on this to erase the image of Cambodia as a pedophile’s paradise. In spite of all the measures, the most horrific crime on earth still exists. And flourishes.

Of course, the future appears to be brighter than the present. Many girls have been rescued and are now involved in small scale industries. There is some degree of self-sufficiency and self-respect returning to them.

Now the burning question. What can be done to prevent this? For once I’m at a loss. I have no idea how this can be stopped. As long as perverts exist in this world, they will continue to engage in what I describe as the most heinous crime under the sun. Of course one way would be stringent punishment if caught. I strongly believe a person who is as merciless as to snatch the virginity of a pre-pubescent 10 year old deserves absolutely no mercy himself. He should be given death penalty and not by hanging – he should be killed in the most inhumane manner. Not only that, all the people who are involved like the "suppliers" deserve a similar punishment.

As for the prevention, well, I’m hanging my head in shame. Because I have no answer for this. I can only HOPE that all this stops sooner than later. And hope that somehow we make this world a better place for our children to live in - for starters: free of perverts.

“Zee News ka pardaafaash”.. “Prince ko Bachaana hai”… “Ye aaj [xyz] ke saath hua hai..kal aapke saath bhi ho sakta hai”…

The newsreader’s voice screams at you in a sinister voice.. the creepy feeling that you get is worse than any “Aahat” or “Zee Horror Show” … and I ask myself: “Whatever happened to good old news reporting??” Gone are the days when news reporting used to be just that – reporting the events and occurrences worldwide to the viewers. In today’s competitive world, news channels attempting to capture market share are taking the fun out of watching news.

Instance 1:

A couple of days after the Bombay blasts, I saw a reporter in a private news channel (don’t remember which), outside the house of one of the victims. There were all mourners dressed in white and the reporter asks one of the kin of the deceased: “Kaisa lag raha hai aapko? Kya kehna hai aapko is haadse ke bare me?” What the hell does she expect the reply to be? “Ji bahut khushi ka mauka hai.. hum mithai baatne waale hain..aap khaayengi?” I mean how bloody ridiculous can you get? Cant you leave the bereaved family alone in the moment of grief? What exactly are these news channels trying to prove?

Second thing that strikes me about this is the double standards that the journalists follow. I know that the reporters would be under pressure from above to do this, so I’l target the big bosses instead. I challenge them to give an interview during the funeral of one of their dear ones. Chances are that the reporter will end up in jail!

Instance 2:

A 5 year old kid had fallen into a 60 ft deep pit in Haryana. Many news channels made most of the situation. They covered the entire thing LIVE.. 60 hours of rescue operations et al. Lets give them the benefit of doubt. There were people who actually watched the entire thing. People from all walks of life and all faiths offered prayers for the child’s safety. So maybe, just maybe they were justified in airing the thing live. But some channels like Zee News were more keen on marketing themselves than in the well-being of the child. They repeatedly kept boasting that they had coined the phrase which supposedly united the whole country “Prince ko bachaana hai”. And wherever they interviewed people, the public started off with “Hum Zee News ke aabhaari hain” message.

This IMO, illustrates another example of bad taste as far as reporting and journalism is concerned. I was afraid some other news channle might push a kid into a well twice as deep as this one; and then rescue him just to have the upper hand!

Instance 3:

The way celebrities are treated by the media always scares me – it always reminds me of Princess Diana. I mean agreed that they are public figures, but they should be given atleast some space. Some stars are so worried about their children that they have kind of a pact with the media – you promise to stay away from my child and we promise to present ourselves to the media periodically. This is not the way they should be treated.

I have made this point before – every right is accompanied by a corresponding duty. The media has freedom of expression, but its their duty to use this freedom responsibly. Somehow someone has to put a stop to all this madness before things get out of hand. The ridiculous and double-standards must all be stopped. It only harms the societal fabric.

Ok.. This post is meant to vent my frustration… in connection with the Mumbai blasts and beyond. So don’t expect anything rational here…So where do I start? I don’t even want to ask the usual questions “what did they gain by slaughtering the innocent” etc etc.. because these are hardcore, extreme terrorists. It is meaningless to expect logical thoughts from them.

I think the terrorists are extremely intelligent. Why dint they attack the Parliament (since their last unsuccessful attempt that is)?? Or any other seat of Govt or any political place for that matter? Because they have not underestimated the potential that we have .. they know that we are fully capable of bringing them to justice and even almost driving them to extinction. And if they do succeed in unsettling any of our “leaders”, then they know that the anti-terrorsist machinery will start working in full swing. They don’t want to bring about their own end by bombing the Parliament.

So what do you do? Attack the innocent public.. and hit where it hurts most. Attack the local trains in Mumbai during peak hour on a working day. The terrorists are fully aware that the “leaders” are not going to give a damn about whats happening. Fathom this: A news channel begged politicians to stay away from the blast sites for a couple of days since there was chaos everywhere and roads were all jammed – a high profile visit would only add to the woes. Inspite of this Sonia Gandhi pulled a political fiasco by visiting the sites and supposedly offer her condolences. So did LK Advani. Shame on them. And to hell with them.

So the terrorists were right. They knew that the blasts would only be used by certain shameless people to gain political mileage. They know that they are safe because the government and opposition alike will concentrate on making hay while the sun shines rather than take measures to prevent such happenings again. They also know that if the present generation of corrupt politicians go, then they might be replaced by younger people who really care for the country, who will leave no stone unturned to ensure development, and who will really do something to curb terrorism. The terrorists don’t want to spell their own doom by doing this do they?

Now we also have ourselves to blame partly for the blasts. I don’t see how such a co-ordinated effort could have succeeded without the (probably unwitting) involvement of locals. For example, some1 somewhere would have been bribed into transporting the explosives saying that the goods are “just smuggled electronics goods”. This is just an illustrative example but you get the point. Such bribes are accepted without even tickling the conscience. A little more honesty might have gone a long way in averting the massacre.

We now come to the other shameless sections of the society who, instead of actively participating in getting Mumbai back on its feet, are out inflicting more harm on he society – I’m referring to a section of VHP who attacked a peaceful mosque in Surat. At a time when they should be doing something constructive, they are hell bent upon destroying the unity of the nation. Don’t they know that people from all walks of life were killed in the blasts? Don’t they know that a bomb doesn’t consider a person’s religion, caste, social status, political view before killing him? I would say that this act is not less shameful than the blasts itself.

Finally we have Mulayam Singh Yadav who has stuck his neck out to say that SIMI is not involved in the blasts. Why cant he for once look beyond his vote bank and face reality. Agreed that he doesn’t care about his country .. but he atleast cares for his own safety. These (or some other) terrorists could target him tomorrow. Also is he foolish enough to believe that people will vote for him if he gives a clean chit to some terrorist outfit? He’s wrong. The very people whom he is trying to woo by doing this will turn against him. Because they are all peace-loving patriotic citizens of India ...not even one of those qualifiers applies to Mulayam Singh Yadav.

All this notwithstanding, I still remain optimistic. I hope and I know that sometime in the near future, the public and the administration alike, will wake up to the challenges. The next generation is capable of building an India that is more focused on the people than in politics. How far away we are from that day is debatable. But as always, I prefer to end my blog on an optimistic note. JAI BHARATH.

Let me begin at the beginning. The theme of the event was Innovation and Leadership. The fact that The President, in spite of his busy schedule, actually customized his speech for the occasion speaks volumes about his meticulousness. The President basically spoke of something called World Knowledge Platform. While I don’t want to go into the details of this proposal, it would suffice to say that it is exactly what the name says – a proposal to bring together the “knowledge workers” of the world over for the betterment of the world as a whole.

Now comes the interesting part. After putting forth every point, he pointed out the relevance of this point in the context. “What is the importance of this here? What role does your company have to play in this scenario?” And then, he very accurately stated what responsibility the company should take up to make this a reality. This impressed me mightily. Where every other so-called “leader” just repeats the same speech over and over again, function after function, day after day, year upon year; we have a President who has taken the interest and the pains to come up with such a striking plan, something that really matters! I urge all of you to go through the website http://www.presidentofindia.nic.in. You will be amazed at the super brains of our President.

The President has proposed several plans for rural development in India. And it all seems plausible, only it needs whole-hearted participation of the 540 million odd “knowledge workers” of the country. Of particular interest are his ideas of PURA (something to do with rural development, I don’t exactly remember the expansion), and some idea about an inter-connected grid of 5 grids which ultimately forms an Economic Grid.

When asked “What do you think are the necessary qualities to be a good leader”, The President listed 3 points:

1. Vision: He cited the example of Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, who had a vision as early as in the 1960’s – that India should launch her own satellite. Today that vision has been realized.

2. Confidence that the vision will be Achieved: Again, Vikram Sarabhai had not simply said something random. He had the confidence that it is achievable and with that end in mind, he worked his entire life.

3. But these 2 qualities are not enough. At the end of the day, a leader must be a good human being!

Another question posed to him was “What do you think are the most important factors to propel India to the fore in the next 10 years?” To this, The President replied:

1. Development of Human capital.
2. Energy Independence – This could be realized through judicious mix of Solar power, Bio-fuel and Nuclear energy.

And this one takes the cake. When asked what his most memorable and happiest moment so far was, The President replied thus:

• In 1987, when the satellite that he and his team worked on, was launched and the satellite successfully placed into orbit, that gave him immense satisfaction.
• After that, when a 2000 km range missile was developed by his team and according to specifications, within budget, that was a very happy moment too.
• Then, when He was in Pokhran and the earth shook – the realization dawned: India was a Nuclear Power. That was a proud moment too.
• All these were happy moments, BUT, the happiest was something totally different. It seems a doctor once told Dr. Kalam “What do you want to prove by launching a missile? Look at this poor girl – she has polio and she carries 3 kgs of weight in her crutches!! Do something for her; it will be much more meaningful.” So Dr. Kalam and his team set down to work and reduced the weight of some of the material used for the missile (FRO) from 3 kgs to 300 grams. They used this ultra-light material for the girl’s crutches. “When the child walked normally and I saw her parents wipe their tears – That was the happiest moment of my life”

Now it’s up to you to decide whether The President deserved the Three (Not one, not two but 3) standing ovations that he received!

However, this brings a few questions to the fore –

• Why is it that the right person is always at the wrong place? Make no mistake – Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam is a great visionary in every sense of the phrase. Given the power, he has the potential to turn India into a knowledge society free of all prejudices. Which brings us to the next question
• What powers does The President of India really have? First of all, Dr. Kalam has been the only President in recent times to have really utilized whatever little powers he has (as was demonstrated in the recent Office of Profit case). But these powers don’t amount to much (which was again shown in the Office of Profit case).

Regardless, please don’t ever let go of an opportunity to listen to Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam’s speech if you ever come across one. He is a tremendous motivator. You can’t help but feel extra-ordinary respect for him. Hope that his vision is realized in the nearer future.

JAI BHARAT.

Well, I have always been opposed to the concept of such reservations. It’s the best way to make meritorious people feel unwanted in their own country. This is the last thing India needs at a time when She is just beginning to prove her potential to the world. Be it in sports, science, technical field, management, finance, fashion, entertainment, you name it. India is emerging in all these fields. And obviously it is only possible if the right people are at the right place.

IITs and IIMs have been always looked up to as the pinnacle of education in their respective fields. Half the reason that they maintained such high standards is because of the quality of incoming students. It’s a give and take kinda relationship. The students gain from the name of the institute and the institutes maintain their standard because of the students. You better not mess with this balance, else everything falls apart.

Enough of beating around the bush. Lets get to the point. In case of such reputed institutes, MERIT IS EVERYTHING. I have known cases where a guy worked his ass off during 12^th Std and CET to get a good rank and get a free seat in a good engineering college [poor guy couldn’t afford payment seat AND dint belong to any of the “quota” categories]. He went there only to see the more than half the people around him have got seats because of reservations. One of his friends had got a rank of 30,000+ and during “studying” for CET, his only intention had been to pass all subjects in 12^th. “Why should I simply put all the effort? Its enough if I pass in 12^th. I’l easily get a seat in a good Engg college because of my quota”. And mind you, this person was not even as economically needy as my friend.

The point I’m trying to make is: Reservations, if ever they are required, should be on basis of FAMILY INCOME ONLY, not caste, creed, religion, sub-caste [or population of the vote-bank :-/ ]. Here is an argument I frequently hear to SUPPORT the reservation system, and my counter-arguments : -

People from backward classes have the right to quality education too.

• Oh Yeah, they do. So, let them put effort and get a good rank and gain entry into such prestigious institutes. If you are meritorious, then you WILL get a seat, nobody’s gonna deny a meritorious student a seat just because he’s from so-and-so caste.
• “Backward caste” IS NOT EQUAL TO “Poor”. In many cases, a person’s parents would have (justifiably) taken advantage of the reservation system to come up respectfully in society. They would be financially well-to-do. So then [according to me] the child doesn’t qualify for the quota.
• I don’t think any of these pro-reservation crowd give a damn about the large number of meritorious people out there, who neither qualify for any of the quotas, nor are financially well-off. Such people will feel like aliens in their own motherland if the quota system kicks-off.
• If a person IS admitted to such a prestigious institute by disregarding his [absence of] merit, then the standard of that institute will be brought down [Imagine, almost half of the students in IIMs and IITs will be unfit to be there!!]. Also, the non-merit person will not be able to cope with the curriculum and is likely to drop out before course completion.
  

I strongly feel the Govt would be better off improving the reach and quality of primary and secondary education. This would make more students fit for such quality higher education. Also, provide benefits and concessions for the economically backward. But, say no to reservations.

LETS NOT ALLOW CORRUPT POLITICIANS DIVIDE THE COUNTRY FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR VOTE BANKS. RAISE YOUR VOICE AGAINST THIS HEINOUS CRIME.

JAI HIND.

Obviously his acting has to be one of the reasons. To say he was a versatile actor would be the understatement of the century. He portrayed Gods, kings, Detectives, Police officers, Common man, beggar, villain … all with equal ease and grace. But was that all??

No. He was a very principled man. Statistics speak for themselves. He acted in over 200 movies in his lifetime. And..

• Not a single of these movies had any smoking or drinking scenes
• No vulgarity whatsoever
• ALL OF THEM WERE KANNADA MOVIES (well that sets a new definition for “Love for your Mother-tongue”). This doesn’t mean he hated other languages. He just had utmost respect or his own mother tongue
• He never entered politics. Make no mistake : had he wished, he could’ve become CM of Karnataka without beating a sweat. But he dint. He was miles away from politics

I doubt there is any actor in India who can boast of such principle. All this from a man who only studied upto 3^rd Standard.

RajKumar also died a peaceful death. Not much suffering or pain. Thankfully. Just a sudden cardiac arrest and he was gone.

Then why the violence during his funeral? A man who stood for peace throughout his life dint deserve all this. His soul must have been shattered to see all this. Obviously it was not his “fans” who did all this. His family dint get to spend one single private moment with his corpse. Did they deserve all this?

This brings us to the topic of mob mentality. My heart bled to see innocent people being tortured the way they were during those 2 days. Cars being smashed and burnt, buildings and petrol pumps damaged so badly, they were unrecognizable. Policemen being dragged from their vehicles and being beaten up. And then the crowd (supposedly “mourners”) celebrating their act of bravery by whistling in front of the TV cameras.

All this brings a bad name to Bangalore and worse to RajKumar. People watching from outside would be cursing our greatest hero of all time. Little do they know what a peaceful man he was and that all this is diametrically opposite to his values.

I was really stunned by watching all this on TV. Ever since watching RDB, I had had a confidence that it is possible to change the country. This incident has kind of shaken my confidence. Rulers can be changed. Politicians can be changed. The system can be improved. BUT NOT THE PEOPLE. They will remain the same. You cant change the mentality of the masses.

I fervently hope this is a one-off incident. I fervently hope that what we saw on Black Wednesday and an even darker Thursday was the handiwork of only a minor percentage of the public and not representative of the public in general. I eagerly look forward to a country where people respect the law and respect others’ right to a peaceful life. It feels good to finish off your blog on an optimistic note :). Jai Hind.

I finally got my new mobile on Monday. Motorola L7. Obviously was upbeat about it. Thought its time for a preliminary analysis. So here goes…

When I opened the box (cool design I shd say about the box, slides out both ways :D) and saw the phone, my first thought was WOW!!!. Its really really slim and all that..perfect eye-candy. Then I held it and again was impressed with the light weight.

Inserting the SIM, memory card and battery was not too much of a problem. Time to switch it on. WOW!!! Again. Excellent screen. It took me quite some time to explore the features. Then suddenly remembered that my PC@home was down (old chap.. gotta perform plastic surgery on him). So had to wait till next day to install the PC software on my laptop and connect it.

Next day at office, downloaded some stunning wallpapers and a few songs and transferred them to the phone. Took few pics and a video recording, but discarded most of them cuz wasn’t satisfied (not with the quality but with the content J ). Tried out bluetooth. Then used the PC software to cut a couple of MP3 ringtones and then had to turn my attention to work L. Was really happy with the quality of MP3. Hadn’t expected much from the camera, but it dint disappoint [the pic is a snap i took of my laptop wallpaper]. Also searched for free applications to download. Found one but not free, so decided to write it myself ;) [it’s a fuel efficiency calculator.. started working on it already].

Now started rummaging through the box to check out what else is there. Other than the 128 MB memory card, my phone came with the earphones-cum-handsfree, PC-cable, PC software CD,and obviously the charger. Incidentally all of these connect to the same slot on the phone, which means you cant use the earphones while charging or when connected to the PC. However, the phone charges when connected to the PC, so no probs here. Miscellaneous accessories include the “tag” and extra sponges for the earphones.

Suddenly realized that hadn’t found the Guarantee/warrantee form. Immediately pinged Ashish and asked him about it (he had got his phone through the same offer as I did). He said he had got a booklet and a form which he mailed to them. Again dug into the box only to find an instruction book, a booklet which lists the authorized service centres, a kind-of quick-start guide and a 2-page “terms and conditions of guarantee”. But dint find any form. My friend at Moto tells me that from the IMEI number they can find out that this phone was from this particular offer. So for the time being I’m keeping this aside.

By this time I had started getting lotsa SMS’es. As expected, the phone is not very SMS-friendly. Typing is very un-intuitive compared to my 1100, both because of the keypad and because iTAP is used instead of T9. I now realized that my phone has a limit of only 10 messages (that compared with Nokia 3310/5!). Thought it might be something to do with phone memory/SIM memory or card memory; but after playing around with the options for a while, I gave up. I’l ask at the service center if its possible to upgrade the ROM or anything.

There were 2 pre-loaded games (both Java) – a car race and a cricket. Pretty decent I should say. But while playing these games I came across a horrible design layout blunder in the phone. Its like this: The GREEN button (to make or accept calls) is on the left and RED (power/disconnect/cancel) is on the right. But, in almost all applications, the button with OK semantics is assigned to the right soft key (above the RED button), and the BACK/CANCEL semantics is assigned to the left soft key (above the GREEN button). So u can imagine the consequences of pressing the RED button instead of OK button in some application (not to mention the confusion during usage.. like we normally associate one side of the phone with OK and the other side with CANCEL, but here everything’s everywhere).

Other observations are the finger smudges that appear all over the phone. But its not that big an issue. Volume buttons on the side, a camera button on the right side, and another programmable button on the left side are really handy. Speaker phone feature is pretty good too.

All said and done I really liked the phone. Had never expected it to be so good. I think I’l conclude with a summary of the adv-diasdv.

Advantages:

• LOOKS!!!
• Excellent screen display.
• Battery back-up.
• Very good mp3 sound quality, especially if using headphones.
• Pretty fast operation, like accessing the card memory etc.
• All those buttons on the sides.
• Some very useful tools and applications
• Its JAVA-enabled, so I can write my own applications.

Disadvantages:

• Everything related to SMS (number, typing etc).
• The design layout blunder I mentioned earlier.
• No infra-red (if u consider that as a disadv :D).
• Single slot for earphones, charger and PC-cable.