Saturday 29 December 2012

Delhi Gang Rape: A slap in the face of democracy

The 23 year old paramedical student, who was battling for her life for the past two weeks, called it quits today morning after having reported with multiple organ failure and fatal head and abdominal injuries. The girl was brutally assaulted and raped by a chunk of six men, in a moving bus, who were allegedly under the influence of alcohol that evening. She was accompanied by her 27 year old male friend who was beaten up for having tried to help her out of the trap of the savage beasts. The two, after being beaten up with iron bars, were stripped off and thrown out of the bus along the roadside of a flyover in mahipalpur area of Delhi. The two had been to a movie and were on their way back to their home when they boarded a bus headed towards dwarka,from munirka bus stop in Delhi.The shocker in this whole thing was that the bus was moving around the suburbs for around 40 minutes with its tinted glasses and curtains concealing the crime within.

Easily one of the rarest-of-rare cases of rape in India, the incident received public outrage from all parts of the nation. The issue reached the steps of Indian parliament with several female MP`s demanding a severe punishment such as death penalty which will serve as a deterrent to avoid further replication of such heinous crimes in the country. People even showed agitation against the police. Delhi police is, undoubtedly, a guest to several blames and accusations for having proved its inadequacy in preventing and dealing with the repeated crimes of the same nature in the capital. The bus is said to have passed through three check posts that evening without the notice of Delhi police. The police patrolling vans, failing to keep a tab on the brutal event, added to the censure of the police.

The question that arises here is why does the government always come up with preventive measures after the milk gets spilt? This is surely not the first case of rape in the capital. Delhi has a record of 572 registered rape cases, according to the statistics of National Crime Record Bureau, reaching to an average of a rape every 20 minutes. Is this a fact petty enough to be ignored by the government? Why did the government turn a deaf ear to these crimes? Had the government taken prior action against such assaults earlier, that girl could be saved from falling victim to this social failure.

In addition to all this, the mentality of the backward people, which form a significant fraction of the population of Delhi, is something that deserves a larger share of the blame. A woman is accused of being uncultured, having a westernized lifestyle, and hanging out with male friends. Her attire also receives a speculation of being one of the triggers for having lured the attackers. Common, how can you justify such inhuman acts with such a retarded school of thought?  We are living in a democracy. A woman will live a lifestyle she chooses for herself. These men are no-one to comment on that, leave aside the blame of luring them. Where is the Indian culture that we all always boast about? It is incorrect to seek that culture in a woman`s dress-up, for culture starts with morals,that`s more profound than clothes and that’s something the convicted men lack big time. So stop talking about culture until you inculcate that within yourself first.

Well, this accident is a social failure of all the elements of the society altogether. The judicial system stands out as the weakest link among-st all. Lenient laws that can be tripped easily , absence of harsh convictions, delay in the entire process of trials and hearings, all these facts serve no purpose in deterring the feeble-minded culprits from refraining themselves from committing such crimes. An unyielding set of laws should be brought in as a substitute to these merciful way outs. The judicial system needs to get stronger and remorseless against those convicted.

Certainly, the capital of world`s largest democracy has witnessed such a barbaric act ending up abasing every definition of democracy. It’s high time we see a change in the outlook of people, in the government strategies, in the system of judicial laws and in the obligation of our protectors-the police, for this nation has many more daminis to protect! (Sigh)

Sunday 21 October 2012

GET ME MY CHILDHOOD BACK !


GET ME MY CHILDHOOD BACK !


















In the dark and at the night,
I sat with a pen and a paper to write
all the memories of my childhood,
all my mischieves and all my mights.

I remembered all my crazy deeds. 
The plant I am today,I sorted its seeds.
I looked for the days that made me cry
then I wished myself well and told them bye !

I recalled the day when I got a new cycle,
to ride me to school,with no problems to tackle.
I reckoned my friends and all my foes
and playing hide-&-seek with them with runny nose.

Exams were then no great fear.
There wasn`t any need to burn the lamp and prepare.
Mummy just told me to prosper
and bribed me with a cadbury to brush up my gear.

There were days when I was on cloud 9
with my facile grades,perceiving world as a sunshine.
Everything seemed to be happy and gay,
with a candy smile, starting each new day !

Days were a bliss and life - an apparent fun.
With only wingding and no glum
No problems to handle and no worries.
My innocent heart ! A treasure of only good memories.

Then came the dawn of my teenage
with a burden of entrances, me still unfledged.
Life got ruined, mummy`s cadbury also blew
My heart transformed into brain with syllabus at each edge.

Writing it all down, I got moved with this flash back.
Life was better in the days of the past.
I pray to god to become such an engineer,
so as to invent a time machine and get my childhood back !

Thursday 4 October 2012

5 ways to check if you are a facebook addict ?

                              Facebook has brought in a volley of social connections on the world wide web.After its inception in 2004 , this  thunder of socializing took another couple of years to make its way to the Indian peninsula and once it  made an entry there was no looking back. People took a heed to it, understood it and today,as of 2012, which is almost 8 years after its outset , it has become the largest virtual giant of its millennium with a statistic of over 8 billion followers there by making Mark Zuckerberg, world`s youngest billionaire.


Wall , like , comment , share, pages and what not. Its biggest pro is its user-friendly trait. Should you
create a profile on facebook and spend another couple of days filtering through it which you will be doing definitely ,you will master half of it. You don`t need to be a tech savvy to get its features.

Here I am listing 5 ways to find out if you are a facebook addict :



1. When T is replaced by FB : 

Yeah, if you find yourself waiting more fervently for your facebook page to upload than your morning tea,then there might be a possibility of your falling prey to the beast. Recall yourself waking up in the morning only to find out yourself typing in your username on your smartphone and checking in your comments before caffeine.




2. Last activity - few seconds ago :

Simply open your browser, head to the history page, check out if facebook is the last webpage visited that your browser prompts. Repeat this activity for 3-4 times a day. See to it whether you turn up getting positive result everytime.









3. 1000 friends..are you kiding me ?? :


                          Your affability needs a check. You can never have a network of 1000 friends unless you are Lady Gaga ofcourse ! So, if you find your friends list getting a scrawl above a kilo , then for sure you have spent time sending friends requests to your not-in-touch neighbours, friends of friends , your sibling`s friend, your parents friends, your teachers and even your minions and whosoever you have mutual friends with and your only agenda has been increasing your friends list causing a real waste of time. Dude,you are an addict !



4. I 'Like' you :

Just check in some of the news feeds of recent past and scroll down to see all the posts.Check if
you see 'unlike' option on almost every post. If so,this means that you have already liked maximum posts. This will give you another hint of you being an addict and that you have spent some real time binging on facebook.




5. All day, all night :

        When you reach the brink of night and are finally done checking facebook on your laptop and you decide to call it a day, curling up in your blanket and suddenly all that you notice is yourself logging into your facebook profile, again, through your cell-phone , just to check your profile one last time before sleeping then man, you have got something real serious to worry about.






After following the above schedule , its now time to rate your self and check your addiction level.
Each tip carries 1 mark.










Score :
 * 1 or below - You are a very normal human being and are out of danger. No need to worry. Just make  sure you never ever get facebook reach your veins.

* 2-3 - You are on the average side of facebook mania and your time-misspend skills are still  mediocre.        

* 4-5 - Dude ! Your dope test has yielded positive results and you are a major victim of this trail. Technical supervision recommended.

Sunday 8 July 2012

Indian cinema : Retro v/s Modern

The other day I was watching 'Dum Maaro Dum' , which was playing in the bus , on my way back to my hometown from Pune. The movie has Deepika Padukone with her sultry hot look , dancing on the classic remixed version that seemed, to me, quite cool and catchy. But to my contrary, an elderly couple, sitting next to me was not quite happy with the developements of the song and was constantly tattling, claiming the song to be too explicit and reassuring that Zeenat Aman can not be simulated and that today`s songs and movies lack content and inscription. Well, for me, Deepika sizzled as much as Zeenat Aman did. But we are forced to believe that old is gold.





Guys, gone are the days, when every 15 minutes , the hero-heroine used to jump and roll, over and around the mountains and trees, with every one , including the villagers, labourers and hawkers,  joining their dance, catching their steps as if the hero had choreographed it with a foresight in advance. Well, we can justify their rendezvous in gardens , given that there were no CCD`s, malls and PVR`s for this budding love to blossom (laugh). But what will justify the grumbling mothers , who are at the edge of mortgages, at the hands of the local zamindars, with the burden of medicines for their bed-ridden husbands and an iota of prestige for there already-raped daughters , by some of the folks of the zamindar clan. The only glowing hope for them is their son, who is expected to fall in love with the daughter of the same zamindar, calling for the then highly-applauded drama of a "rich girl marrying-poor lad". Uhhh ! Variety please !

As per my opinion, people just exaggerate when it comes to the reverence of yesteryear cinema. People refer it to be a piece of art with some social message dabbed in it. Quoting a domestic example , my father always has this statement ready with him "Hamare zamane ki filmo me meaning hota tha." He has also made several futile efforts of grabbing me to watch some of his favourite movies, which according to him, are the epics of Indian cinema. Though I don't have that patience to tolerate such a snail-pace screenplay, I had to succumb once, to his piece of art, to watch 'Sholay' cluelessly. The next time I managed to elope secretly from watching 'Deewar' , giving myself a triumphant way-out from hearing its highly melodramatic dialogues like the one in which the protagonist,boasting about his wealth, questions his not-so-rich sibling -''Mere paas bungla hai, gadi hai,bank balance hai. Tumhare paas kya hai ?'', to which his brother pathetically replies,'' Mere paas maa hain ! '' Gosh !

With due respect to the retro cinema, I feel the present day movies have got some real concrete meaning. Common, we don`t need a dose of extravagant plots, all of which, have something or the other to do with the rich-&-poor repurcussions or some theif-&-cop themes, as if these are the only issues in real life. People say they had ace film-makers like 'Gurudutt', 'Manoj Kumar', who have made many classics. So even we have some pioneer examples of contribution from personalities like 'Rakesh Omprakash Mehra'  for films like 'Aks' , 'Rang de basanti' or be it Anurag Kashyap, for his fims like 'Black Friday' , 'Water' , 'Udaan'. We have some serious actors like Amir Khan , Naseeruddin Shah who have some constant array of movies which are different and meaningful. To add to the variety, we have many directors dealing with youth-oriented subjects like Imtiaz Ali, Kabir Khan, Ayan Mukherjee who have earned remarkable applaud from the teen-cum-mature section of our audience.
             
Cinema in the previous era had a lot of over-the-top acting in it. Imagine yourself standing in a temple in a stormy night, ringing temple bells in a frantic manner, threatening God for all the fates of your life, with questions like ''Aaj khush toh bahot honge aap ??'' Common folks ! Time for some reality check. Who behaves like that ? Acting should symbolise reality. Films 'on reel' are what ppl are 'in real'  and unless we will connect to it, see ourselves in the characters of the movies, we will not be able to bond with those films.

Films today are globalised. We have films for every section of the audience. It is, undoubtedly, reaching out to a wider reception because the scripts have seen some newer changes. Thoughts and ideas have become far more rational. Acting has become more approachable and dialogues are written , keeping in mind the routine conversations of common people, cutting out those lengthy, stagy dialogues. To sum it all up, film methodology has adapted a practical approach which can be linked with a large group of audiences.
               
There is a lot of originality and diversity in the scripts. Like there are some really different movies for different sectors of audiences. For instance, recent hits like 'Kahani', a suspense movie with a cliff-hanging and unpredictable climax, 'Vicky Donor', striking the chord amongst the youngters, 'Paan Singh Tomar', a movie based on crime, entertaining the mature section of the audience. And for people, who watch movies just for fun and some hours of tension-free time, a no-brainer like 'Rowdy Rathore' has hit the charts. So, in all, there are ample varieties of movies which have got both critical and commercial acclaim.

We have this prejudice in our minds that whatever is old is gold. With due respect to all the concerned, that might be gold for you because you have grown up watching those movies and you have your memories attached to it. But one thing you need to acknowledge is that this is our generation and we love these movies and just as you expect respect for your set of cinema, so do we. To be frank, I love these movies of our generation because I get to watch something that can be resembled and enjoyed, unlike those caricatures.
              
This change in the way of styling and presenting of films has turned out in our favour because I simply can`t imagine myself in that era. I am sure I am no different than the youth of this country. Many of them out there feel the same. I have no intensions of cursing retro-cinema and its approach. But certainly when elderly people assume our-time cinema to be meaningless and absurd, and we have no option but to absorb those words, blogging is my only answer.

Thursday 28 June 2012

Being Happy :)


                                        What is happiness ? Well this question will yield different answers to different individuals like people may find happiness in  money , love , success and blah blah blah.  Disagree ! Money, success , love are material possessions and happiness can never be equated with material things , for it is an emotion and not a possession.




                                        To be happy, one has to clear ones mind of prejudices and assumptions and inculcate following things in one`s soul.

* Acceptance -  Accept yourself for who you are.  Stop analysing yourself.  If you expect people to love you , first you need to love yourself. The problem that lies here is many of  us feel that we are incompetent or good-for-nothing. Well,god has created you and this itself is proof enough that he has some plan for you on earth. Remember,  only you are going to play the hero of your movie called life. In the end, its going to be about your life. So, stop being too critical of yourself and shed that barrier of inferiority.

* No Anticipation - People are going to be mean and self-centered. Nobody in this world is born to please you. They are going to live for themselves. So, stop expecting too much. Love people and care for them but only if you can do so without expecting anything from them in return. ' Give, don't expect and forget ' is all you can do.

*Peace with Past - Make peace with your past so that it doesn't mess up with your present. You need to be have a tranquility in your mind when you think of your past. Forgive everyone for everything.  You got to have a bigger heart and let go things. Its okay, sometimes , to not know every truth.

*Stop comparing - Stop trying to fit in the shoes of others . Never feel that you are the only one with bad share of destiny. You have no idea what people must have gone through, in their journey of life, to be at a position they are.  Not everyone showcases it.  Simply try and live your role perfectly. If you ever find yourself envy of others, compare yourself to the people lesser fortunate than you. You will surely make out that you have got tonnes of things to be happy about.

*Be content - Contentment is the greatest happiness, as they say. Be happy and grateful for what you have. Every individual has one thing in this world that he is best at. Try to figure it out. You have certainly got a lot to be thankful about. Being content doesn't mean that you have no desires left. It just means that you are gonna give up on cribbing and are gonna be grateful for what you have been gifted with.Grudges pull you down. 'Stop frowning, start smiling '.

                                       Happiness, for me , is within oneself. You cannot seek it , you cannot run after it. It is to be discovered. Your home is your refuge. Surround yourself with whatever makes you happy. Be it music, flowers, books or anything.

                                     Friends, this was all about my perception to being happy. Life is too short to live it with your brains. Listen to your heart.  Trust me, you are just a smile away from 'Being Happy' ;)