In Soup with Superstition

One day while going to my office, there was my friend from Goa, who is a Christian and having a Master degree from University of Mumbai, advised me not to step on a lemon that was lying on the road. She cautioned me that the lemon was left by someone and something to do with the black magic. If I go by the numerous advises then I should confined myself in the four walls of mine.

The Superstition, why it is called so? It should be other way round because there is no greatness surrounded it. World is bonding well over this, no conflict, east and west walks with arm in arm. If you go by definition of superstition then it is something like this - A belief in something not justified by reason or evidence and an irrational fear of the unknown or mysterious.

This small incident is a piece from my own past. One bright morning when I was going to my office, a black cat crossed my way, left to right across the road. It was disturbing, blame on my orthodox upbringing and others beliefs. Still I carried on and boarded the train, forgot the incident immediately when I met all known smiling faces in the train. Thereafter a long hard day in office also denied my memory to recover but once I returned my home and then there I remembered the cat. I tried and tried hard to find a thing that would gave me a chance to raise my finger towards the cat but found none. After lots of thinking, I concluded ‘poor cat, most probably had a very miserable day’.

In Kolkata, when people find themselves in same situation that one is similar to mine, stop instantly and wait for someone else to cross the road before them, the process often cause great inconvenience to the traffic. Therefore, many times car stopped abruptly on the middle of the road without giving any signal and obviously result is, an accident, blame it on your foolish acts but not on the cat.

Most of the time it is the fantasists, who dreams to reach at the top without a sweat or having an immoral intention to harm someone else to settle a thing, so, these sort of peoples start believing all sort weird things. It is all about the mind-scape of a person who is definitely mentally very weak or depended. These natures of human being easily exploited by the peoples those are in the business for making fool and make money. Recently one of my students duped in same manner, I do not know should laugh at him or feel pity. You can  find them at every corner of the world, flaunting ten rings with various kinds of precious stones around their fingers along with many other accessories that match their foolish belief.

The stories behind superstitions always are not a funny one, on the contrary most of the time it is very gory. Animal slaughtered for same cause and why animal human life too sacrificed for some assumption related a shear personal gain.

The picture in USA, Europe and Africa is no better. Witch-hunt, black magic is regular process in the countries of those continents too.

!!!Life is beautiful, enjoy it, but only if you possess a fearless mind!!!

Power Slavers and Freedom Grabber!!

One very hot afternoon I returned to my home and then while sitting in cool comfort on my bed I just closed my eyes and said to myself ‘OH! Home sweet Home’. My idea about ‘Home Sweet Home’ was very small than the wider picture that it actually project A home that brings along a lots of package in our life, gives us protection, security, privacy, happiness, a bed to laze around and the peoples with whom we can share our joy and agony. Sadly, that the world is having a fair share of citizens who may be deserted from this comfort. Even the lucky one those are the proud owner of a house, only a few of them actually having a home.

Strange but true that the very home of yours may not always sound sweeter, when all freedoms are taken away and one forced to stay in. Therefore, this posting belongs to the woman who at present is finding a place in all headlines of this week’s newspapers. This blog is a tribute to the woman known as Aung San Suu Kyi.

Born 19 June 1945 to Aung San and Khin Kyi. She was having two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo, among the two the elder brother died at age eight. Her father Aung San was founder of Modern Burmese Army, who was behind Burma’s Independence in 1947. In that same year itself, Aung San Suu Kyi’s father was assassinated.

Her mother, Khin Kyi, was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960, Aung San Suu Kyi completed her graduation from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi in 1964.Thereafter she continued her education at Oxford. Thereafter she moved to New York and worked with United Nations. Aung San Suu Kyi married Dr. Michael Aris, a scholar and gave birth to two sons, Alexander and Kim. She later has done her Ph.D. from London.

In the year 1990, she won the general election in Myanmar and was all set to form a new government but she denied the right by military junta. Since then she spent more than 15 years under house arrest and for a brief period in prison too. During this period, Dr. Michael Aris died from cancer and before that, he denied a visa to meet Aung San Suu Kyi.

She was recipient of Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and received many other awards from all over the world. Finally, Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on November 13, 2010.

Pray that she continue enjoy the freedom that everyone deserves and hope the military junta in Myanmar learned the lesson and never repeat their previous mistakes.

!!!Freedom is the most precious thing that whole animal kingdom should enjoy, often denied by the power but it is true that those never lost it, may never realise its charm.!!!

Golden Eggs? Zilch? Hence, Opt to Slay!

Festival of lights is over and with this finally getting over our yearly quota of endless festivals. Diwali or Deepavali is one of my favourite festivals because it has all, light, action and bang-bang. 

However, today’s topic is nothing to do with Deepavali or any other festival but it has a link with my one night stay at Pipalkoti and that happened during the last stages of my Valley of Flowers tour. That particular night while some of tour members were busy with a gossip session on various topics, Mr. Ahuja, a retired professor and a wonderful gentleman, inquired about my blog and the type of stuff that I am writing. I told him that started with my memoir but my life is a very ordinary one so have to divert to other things that includes some from the current affairs and specially the one disturb me very much. He asked if I have anything about dowry death, I was surprised and ashamed that I never thought about it.

Therefore, decided to express my views on this burning issue that exposes a greedy and an ugly face of human beings. Just imagine, may be at this very moment there is somebody in somewhere living with a burning desire to burn someone and that too for a little financial gain. I do not blame whole in one side, why in the first place the parents of the bride have to shower needless and abundant gifts. In our country, rich always try to find some occasions to flaunt their wealth. Wedding ceremonies for them are just an event where they tried their best to outsmart each other’s. Nevertheless, after these big fat weddings ceremonies can anyone guaranty that rich and famous will be totally unaffected from this thing.

Sorry to say that the middle class are the one who are most involved and at the same time worst effected. Here, the middle class failed and failed miserably. You can call it middle class mentality, as they opted to walk through the middle path, cannot give more and always wanted more. Parents start maintaining a data sheet from the day a male child is born, so they can track down all expenses occurred for the boy until the day he get married. Giving birth to a male child is a trade and naturally, no one like to carry with an unsuccessful trade. What a pity the groom who goes under the hammer and sold like an animal but the bride who are slaughtered. Most disturbing part of this heinous crime is that the roles of women, from planning, plotting and execution, women are equal acquaintance.

Not all dowry related incident ends up with homicides. Often things are more worse, women had to suffer everyday and sometime she forced to go back to the in-laws if she decided to knock the door of her parents. A suicide is no less than a murder and in such case husband, in-laws and parents all are in same boat.

!!!Burn the evil within, the greed within and of-course burn the desire to burn!!!

My Restless and Cramped Drop of Sweat

Last eight postings were all about my Valley of Flowers travel experiences, once again diverting to something else. During this period, some extra-ordinary thing happened, yes sorry to say that after a million of hitches, we were finally able to conduct the Commonwealth games. A country of one billion plus and believed to be a super power in the making, this kind of things should have been a cakewalk, but no, for our so called netas and babus we have to face so many hurdles and glitches. 

Indian athletes have done exceptionally well, but one has to consider the quality of the teams and countries that participated in this international sports meet. Apart from a few among the medal winners, others never looked like being able to keep their form at any other world class meet, forget the Olympics, not even in Asian Games where they have to compete with the Asian giants like China and Japan.

Saina Nehwal, Sushil Kumar, Deepika Kumari and some of the shooters including Gagan Narang and Abhinav Bindra, most probably will make India proud at other tournaments too and hope that they will leave their mark at those big arena.

We cannot blame the sportsperson for the conditions; in our country, the problem is that we do not have a proper infrastructure. Most sports bodies are headed by so-called over aged politicians or bureaucrats. Many types of activities are played behind the door while selecting the proper and deserving candidates.

Where our organizers failed us, our sports person made up for it. Opening and closing program was at par world class. Response from local audiences that were present at the different venues was excellent. Off-course about crowd behaviour there was single complain from a participating country and that was none other than Pakistan. Foreign media and few from our country too may be disheartened by the success but as a common person, I am very much relieved by the success, because it was India  whose pride was at stake. 

But this success story also having a few glitch, to look things better for the world, Government of Delhi certainly taken all possible measures, while unable to control the high inflation rate and poverty, at least prevented the poor from coming to the line of camera. Then, there is Mr. Mani Shankar Iyer, who ranked his personal enmity with Mr. Suresh Kalamadi above the country. Australian contingent, always arrogant and at its best, they believe in gamesmanship rather than sportsman sprit, vented their anger on some accessories at game village for Australian cricket team's defeat in the hand of Indian Cricket Team.

Now that the game is over, it is high time for some agencies like Enforcement Directorate, Income-Tax, CAG, CBI and CVC, all are working overtime to nail the real culprits. Do not know whether something will come up or not, even after all big promises sometimes it take years and in our country public obviously has very short memory.

Among those thirty-thousand odd crores that was spent on this total project, quite a few thousand crores may be lying cold in some Swiss bank. My main concern is that may be a drop of my sweat also found place over there and like others my drop of sweat is getting suffocated.

!!!My tiny drop of sweat a product of hard work and honesty, is dejected and helpless in the hand off fugitive!!!