Tuesday, January 31, 2006

mugged!

been mugged by ponna so here is my mug !!! my friend had presented this few years back

Friday, January 27, 2006

beat this

Ever felt: 1.Irritated to the core? 2.Tied to your seat? 3.Like hitting the person who did this to you? 4.Like coming out of the place before it was over? I felt all of this last week while watching parama sivan @ satyam… I actually came out of the theater for a break before the interval I even dozed for a while inside the theater… No more comments about the movie…!!! Lesson learnt : Never trust bulb

Saturday, January 21, 2006

What is racism and is it prevalent in India? We can say racism is a system that discriminates people based on their so called ‘race’. Some say that dominant groups in the society are racist, coz it is that group which has the influence and means to oppress others. Racism is a plague in today’s world, a lot of nations which were racist have reformed themselves, and leading example would be Australia with ‘all whites policy’ till 1972, today it is multi cultural and multi ethnic. These developed nations were and some are still racist but at least they have not discriminated their own people. In India we would not hear this term explicitly, but its definition is very well practiced all al over. In India racism is spelt casteism. I will come back to this shortly. Other than that there has always been ethnic tension between the Tamil people and Hindi majority. I grew up in Delhi and till my 10 I was there. Though I have been there for so long and I have been one amongst them, I have never been able to appreciate their thoughts for south Indians. Note: Not everyone is like that. Still some north Indians think that below madya Pradesh everything is called madras and they call everyone ‘madrasi’. Hey guys you cant be so ignorant. I remember when I came to Chennai from Delhi for good after my 10th; my chemistry staff asked me “do you people in madras have worthy colleges?” now that’s ridiculous and not expected from a educated person like her. I never bore the brunt of my co –students coz no one could differentiate me from others by my Hindi accent as it was as good as a delhite, but some new comers from south were always made fun of. Which means that even students had a bad conception of people from south? What is the reason behind this? Is it the complexion that gives them that superiority complex?? You guys would have noticed that in many Hindi movies and in many Hindi serials, an actor portraying south Indian role would speak worst possible English. You can’t mock all the while. Even the auto drivers here speak good English. Wake up guys I think we guys are not that bad and may be we are better than you. It’s high time you realize that. For some reason I have had a strong feeling that even the central govt. has not been fair to these four states, the best example would be the kaveri issue. Why no stern action has been taken? On the other hand the international river treaty between India and Pakistan was enforced immediately. Indian tourism is on the ‘athithi devo bhava’ drive and Chennai is not included in the list of heritage cities! That’s not fair. This kind of pervasive attitude has a decisive hold on individual’s behavior and relationships. This is changing and will take long to completely change. People are realizing now that these four states can’t be taken for granted. The silver lining is that we stood united for good on a 15th august. The feeling of being one should be there for everyone. Its high time south is taken seriously. The next evil is casteism, a theory that some are born superior and some are born inferior. This theory ensures power to the dominant group through oppression of the inferior, this is prevalent throughout India. Untouchability is still prevalent in some villages in India, and these things make casteism even more dehumanising than racism. Would people believe that these sects have separate burial grounds??? Indian government swears by an egalitarian constitution that prohibits any form of discrimination, the fact remains that it is prevalent everywhere. This is deep rooted and will take a long to get out of the society. This is a poison that we have lived with for more than 1000 years. We have just started to uproot it. P.S. Not all the people are like the way I mentioned.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

western influence

I had purposely left this topic in my last blog. I am talking about westernized culture and its effect on us. I feel we are imitating the western life too much; not that western culture is all that bad, just that we are chasing our tradition away. We are instilling social and political ideas that are not indigenous to India. Those days whatever we borrowed from British were good; we realized that Government is an acceptable institution. Britishers also made us realize that Government would give us freedom of opinion, expression and the right to drive public demands in a peaceful manner. Yes! What we have borrowed so far has benefited India a lot, but now with growing IT companies and media the unwanted culture is penetrating deep into our society. We are as such sunk in ignorance and with this happening now, I feel we ourselves are eroding our own ‘self’. Yet you ask anyone about this topic they will have a ready answer “I don’t think western culture has done any harm to us, our culture is very strong and every Indian is held very tight to his/her root” but the stark reality is we are on the way loosing ourselves. The worrying aspect is some people are doing just for the heck of it. Already people are comparing Bangalore as another Bangkok! (I don’t want to dwell into this) Senior people are left on their own by the uncaring wealthy youth, and we would soon see another class poor old people and rich youth, and with this class on the rise we will see a lot of old age homes springing up. The emotional bond that we are proud of will soon die. The diversity that we are proud of will also soon die if not checked. A survey says that Indians are the most patriotic people, and with the current influence even that will change. Why is this happening? One reason is the IT industry and another is media. You see any bollywood movie made these days, but for the name of the movie and actors, it completely resembles Hollywood though in a smaller scale. Movies like murder which din have single page story line ran houseful and the reason is well known. Youth are like clay models who can be molded in whichever way wanted. Hey guys this is not the way to box office, please give us better and sensible movies. The challenge for India is to prepare itself to sit along with any other world class nation in a competitive world market. At the same time, it needs to avoid a problematic juxtaposition between cultural indifferences. Every culture has its depravations, every culture has had saints and great man today as it had earlier. Trying to imitate others will result in only one thing; we will have traditional values and cultures only in history books for our children. Lets hope we are not the cause for it.