What Am I

Once upon a time, as per the mythology, Ram let go of his wife Sita because a washerman questioned his behavior about accepting Sita. Leaving aside, the multiple beliefs about this event, Ram said that the person who is running the show should always be the person to look upto and not have any allegations against him. Now, Mr. Modi, leave aside all the allegations, how can you be happy at the spate of rape incidents. How can you live and sleep with peace when things like these happen. What has happened to your boasted large chest which gave you lot of pride. Has it shrunk because you cannot deal with things like this.. We all know that you will shift the blame to the local govt. who is responsible for the civic law and order. But, the IPC sections are in your jurisdiction, the overall education and the value driven things are in your hands. Even the openly known Nirbhaya case had to wait for 6 years to finally disallow the capital punishment. How will you stand and te...

An enticing article written by Arundhati Roy in Outlook on Prof. Saibaba http://www.outlookindia.com/article/professor-pow/294265 Isn't it ironical that it's been an year that the person mentioned above has been in prison without bail and no charge sheet, whereas our beloved Salman Khan and of course the goddess of many, Ms. jayalalita are acquitted .. (Yeah, I got it .. Salman Khan isn't acquitted, but do you think he won't be!!) Oh, I forgot! Mr. Ramalingaraju is released on bail. ok, I will stop. I will not go down that route. I have no idea about Prof. Sai baba, but the way he is kept under prison is something that questions our ethos. But I also felt sad that I cannot stand up to him. I am also one amongst the millions, living and eventually dying in vain. I shouldn't be acquitted on my unbecoming attitude!! PS: Yes, I have started becoming conscious about my web foot print and hence the diplomatic undertone.

The topic continues to intrigue me. Honestly I continue to not understand it at all. As a boy from south India, where any open discussion regarding the biology of a woman is considered taboo, it took me quite a while to realize what exactly is it. Since then, it's been a confused topic for me. We, do follow this tradition of keeping women separate during the mensus stage. I did ask why, never got a valid explanation. No one at home complained about it. But things aren't as straight forward as they seem.  It is one of the traditions/rituals unknown, and appear to be un-called for. I am still looking for answers. It is not a philosophical journey. But it is another case where I should fight on behalf of ....!!  I've started asking questions. It is one of those instances where I think it is wrong, yet I hope it is correct. Wiki has some answers, read some interesting blogs ( Menstruation perspective ), but am not entirely convinced either ways. (Or do I not w...

I guess, even if I committed a gang rape I'd not have to worry. What will happen at max. let me see. First, the police, even if they catch me, will keep my identity safe and so I do not have to worry about my future reputation Second of all, some people and media will protest against me, but our bureaucrats and the politicians are very concerned about the law & order situation and hence the protests would be brutally crushed  So, I do not have to worry about the pressure from public Third, do you know what is the maximum punishment that I can get. 10 years or fine.  There are multiple ways to minimize the crime.  "Tujhe pata hai merae baap kaun hai" (Do you know who my father is?") .. need less to say anything else. If I prove that I did not plan for it and it was only in the heat of the moment because I was drunk, my punishment will be lessened since my intentions were never to hurt the person. Of-course, there are ways in which the corrupt...

Fucked up is probably the least thing to say, about the mentioned title's status in India! With the latest rape victim case just proving the case once again. So many rapes, gang rapes, blatant violations of the basic human rights .. sorry, I guess the word "human" is no longer relevant to our society. We are animals in a human form... not sure if even that sentence is correct. Every one understands that this is another story line, which will die out soon. Time and again, they keep happening, and now we are looking at some solutions to hasten the punishment process or the so called justice.  What justice are we referring to. What are the cases which actually have given justice in time to the petitioners in India.  The biggest problem behind rapes, gang-rapes or any crimes is the devastation of the legal infrastructure in India. All contracts can be violated, all crimes can be exempted, all criminals can be pardoned.. then what justice and what legal system...

Either you have sex and get pregnant or not have sex at all. Interesting stance that the so called forthcoming religion in the world has. ( Religious views on Contraception ) “This is a direct attack on religious liberty and will not stand in a Romney presidency,”.. so says the spokeswoman of Mitt Romney - the Republican  presidential candidate in US. ( And the reason she says so is to appease the conservative catholic Christians.) Another statistic (Source; NY times) is that 50% of the pregnancies in US are unwanted. And among those 40% end up in abortion. Going by this the 3 million addition to US population last year would have meant ~2 million children unwanted!! So, guess people cannot experiment with this fantasies to without getting pregnant. Not that every time one has sex she will get pregnant, but without emergency contraception or birth control pills, the population explosion would be unstoppable.  Even in India no political party has the co...

I could see that the gate opened into a small ground followed by two rooms with not even a concrete slab. We were waiting for some one to open the lock of the gate. Some guy came with keys. He looked alright..well built and decently dressed and with a badge in his neck. I appeared to be overly dressed up for the occasion in a suit and the laptop. He didn't bother to look into our eyes and was trying to unlock but it didn't happen. The person with me signaled him in some unfamiliar signs and the guy went in, brought another set of keys which opened the lock. I wondered what did the person tell the guy!!  The guy went away with no change of expression in his face as if he has ignored our presence and that he didn't care whether we came in or not. I was bemused at the least! I walked in and I met the lady of the place and the guy, who heads the center, invited me inside. For a place handling the students from Below poverty line, the place was well furnished. It had a...

An engineering marvel is created. Well thought about, well planned, well designed, well executed...well??? It cost $24 bn to build the World’s largest Hydro power project - The Three Gorges Dam by China. It was completed well before the schedule. It provides 18400 MW of electricity which is unfathomable by many other Hydro power projects. Its back waters created a reservoir of water which is as big as UK in length. Now, the flip side..It displaced half a million population and thounsads of towns. The weight of the water stored in the reservoir is only adding to the woes of the land slides, tremors in and around the area. The river is getting more and more polluted since the 1.3 mile long concrete barrier diverted the migration of fish which otherwise would have preserved the sanctity of water in the river. Topping the charts are the facts that Central China, where the project is located is reeling under 50 year drought and that two of Southern China’s largest lakes have almost dried...

Introduction The recent increase in the rapes have made me just do a survey on the performance of various states/cities about the crimes committed in them. A comparison of Rapes that have happened in various states in 2008 is tabulated below. The summary of the table is: a)     MP has the dubisous record of highest number of rapes committed b)     AP is the worst performer in the Southern states which on an overall basis seem to be secure places for women c)     Mizoram has the highest per capita rapes i.e. the number of rapes per million women population. Many North Eastern States have fared bad. d)     Delhi, has more rapes than the states which have almost 4 times its population. Before I jump to any conclusion on the best place to reside, rather the worst place to reside, I thought it would be fair to judge the performance of various cities and then get an overall idea. Here is the performance of vari...

I was just trying to understand the various numbers that came around in news. So, I put some of them in descending order, and the results are in the table below: Scenario Amount (Rs) USA Fiscal deficit (FY10) 92,500,000,000,000 China's reserves (FY10) 90,000,000,000,000 US bail out package (FY08) 40,500,000,000,000 2G Spectrum scam (FY10) 1,750,000,000,000 India's defence expenditure (FY10) 1,433,440,000,000 Compensation paid to BP oil spill in Gulf of Mexico - Till Date 135,000,000,000 Mukesh Ambani's home (FY10) 80,000,000,000 Compensation paid to Bhopal Gas Tragedy (FY01) 21,150,000,000 Loss due to power procured from dabhol power plant (FY01) 10,806,555,000 Profit of Reddy brothers per day (FY11) 170,000,000 Bonus to a typical i-banker in Wall Street (FY11) 40,000,000 ...

This is the amount of investment halted due to the strict norms imposed by our Existing Environmental Minister Mr. Jairam Ramesh.  Rs2 lac crore wasted by Mr. Raja and all that he does is get back and sleep at peace in his own constituency. Now here is one minister who is working day in and day out to ensure that the environmental laws are adhered to but he is being booed all around. In-fact Wall Street Journal lambasted him for concentrating too much on environment than on development. All that Mr. Ramesh is asking for is to ensure that the laws are followed. Being in the industry, I know that many corporates do not follow much of the environmental laws. It is only under the reign of Mr. Ramesh that people started worrying about environment. Earlier the biggest threat for the completion of a power plant was fuel, land availability etc. Now the biggest concern is getting Environment Clearance. Companies used to get the clearance quite easily, but now when the voices of the loca...