Killer controversies

No, I don't mean literally killer controversies, or controversies about killers.
I mean controversies that kill the mood. Controversies that kill all interest in news of the day, or keeping up with current affairs. Controversies that kill all interest in going out and experiencing the world.
So called novelist Shobha De, who is better at being a SoBo socialite, passing judgement on everyone else around her and giving half-baked, useless advice  in shitty newspapers, is at loggerheads with the Shiv Sena, Maharashtra's most powerful political party.
Why?
The State government, a BJP-Shiv Sena coalition, passed some law saying that multiplexes should screen Marathi movies from 11 am to 9 pm. De tweeted- she doesn't seem to have a job other than tweeting about anything and everything- that this is Dadagiri and mentioned the Chief Minister. The party accused her of hurting Maharashtrian sentiments (really?) because she opposed the law. De retorted in her elitist style even more. The party held a dharna in front of her house.
Killer controversy, where the only people benefiting are the novelist and the party. We sensible people are getting killed- our brains and moods.
There are more. Politicians and religious demagogues think that, in this age of increased media glare, making misogynist and communal statements will create controversies that will get them 15 minutes of fame.
Whether it is asking followers to have sex with corpses of Muslim women, commenting on bodies of women or saying Sonia Gandhi wouldn't have been accepted in the Indian political circles if she was African.
Killer controversy. The media doesn't get anything else to report. News worth reporting is over now.
Now the beef ban, taking communal tones, is snowballing into a controversy about mutton being banned in Maharashtra.
Anushka Sharma's needless harassment over her boyfriend Virat's World cup failure.
Arnab Goswami's non-stop babbling on Times Now about whatever catches his fancy, and catching eyeballs.
Chetan Bhagat indulging in shenanigans to get controversy for his books.
Killer controversy.
My brain is dead now. Officially. There is nothing like news now. I must go back to only reading and writing.
This blog post is part of the A to Z Challenge

G for Gender Equality

Yeah yeah, I know.
Some of you're probably gonna roll your eyes till you pass out, at my choice of topic for a blog post.
Gender Equality. The most beaten, done-to-death, repeatedly used and rampantly abused topic of discussion ever.
So today, instead of brandishing my feminist credentials, let me ask some questions I feel are pertinent to the current scene of debate on equality between the sexes.
Gender Equality.
What is Gender Equality?
Is it only for women, because our gender happens to be the historically mistreated ones?
Or is it also for transgenders and transsexuals and other genders/sexual identity- the also historically mistreated ones.
Should the debate on gender equality be confined to women? Or they should include the above mentioned genders too?
Should the dialogue on rape and other sex crimes be confined to women? Or should they include the less publicized, but equally rampant instances of rape against transgenders? Especially in a country like India, which continues to victimize the LGBT community and doesn't recognize a third gender. And where the police itself is guilty, in a lot of circumstances, of custodial rape of transgenders who have no voice in society.
Should we feminists start taking other genders into account too while lobbying for equal rights?
Gender equality should be about people from any gender being able to live life in independence and with dignity; where no one gender can dominate other the other. Just like feminism is about proclaiming the autonomy of women over their own lives, and NOT about hating men. Where misogyny and patriarchy are kept at bay?
Is such a society possible?

E for Egomania

What is ego?

Now, I will resist the psychological definition here.

So, let's just say that ego is that monster residing within us- that inflated monster which defines itself in our obsession to be better than others and our being adamant to not accept our flaws and our faults, our mistakes and our very humanness.

What is egomania? Egomania is that hyper-inflated ego which allows us all to behave like douche-bags who consider ourselves superior than others, whether in looks, color, race, money, status or achievements.

Ego should never be confused with dignity or self-esteem. Dignity or self-esteem is when we respect who we are, we feel good about it and we are strong and confident enough in our skin to face life's problems.

Ego is when we refuse to take criticism, to look at ourselves as flawed, to accept our shortcomings and to improve ourselves. Ego is when we refuse to take responsibility for our actions. Ego is when we can't stop comparing ourselves with other. Ego is when we needlessly compete with others for petty things. Ego is when we cannot take NO for an answer, or make a sacrifice, or accept that we cannot have everything we want. Ego is when we try to pull others down to get to the top. Ego is when we make others feel inferior to make ourselves feel better.

Egomania is when people take their egotistical issues to a whole new level. We also know these people as douche-bags, narcissists, arrogant, pompous, officious and other such adjectives.

This blog is part of the http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

B for...Ban-ophilia

Ban-ophilia. The latest fetish of the Indian political class.
Basically, the mantra seems to be: If anything doesn't go according to the status quo, LET'S BAN IT.

Because a documentary on the sloppy way sexual violence in India is dealt with threatens to expose the political and administrative apathy towards survivors of sex crimes, let's ban it. Excuse? It threatens to 'tarnish' India's image in the world. Who will question us? Not the Indian public anyway. Leslie is white, let's trouble her and accuse her of racism. Who cares if women continue to face sex crimes...or if Jyoti Singh's rapists continue to live when they were supposed to die, or if India's image is already tarnished...not just abroad but also in its own eyes?

Beef. A bone of contention between religions for years. Which is ironic, because Hindus, Muslims and Christians in India eat beef. But they gotta make a religious statement and assert their dominance over the religious 'minorities'. Because at the Center is a government who came into power because of religion and caste dominance. And now is becoming 'majoritarian'. Who cares if citizens' right to eat what they like is being impinged upon? Who cares if thousands of beef sellers in Maharashtra go hungry and die of starvation because of loss of livelihood? Who cares if they snatch a major source of protein from a majority of the population? They have to make a political statement. Since they can't do anything substantial...something as asinine as banning beef is bound to be solid.

And books. What to say of books, eh? Wendy Doniger's book about Hindu history is politically incorrect, so let's ban it. The person who lobbied for banning the book is the same who gave the public gems of wisdom  like: stem cells were preserved in 'ghee' in pre-historic times. Stem cells in ghee, really? Stem cell technology is of the last few decades, and we're still studying and making progress in this field. This same man is the one who's writing such inanities in school textbooks mandated for school kids in Gujarat- in 42,000 schools. So kids in these 42,000 schools will learn pseudo-science paraded as ancient knowledge and grow up to be...one shudders when one thinks of the implications.

Ban Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman just because it tackles a lesser know facet of Tamil culture- an ancient practice where infertile couples could go to this festival worshiping a half man-half woman deity, and the woman could copulate with a strange man to possibly conceive. This writer, who's been chronicling the history of his city for years, wrote this novel to highlight the issue of how infertile women are treated in Indian society. But because it didn't go with the version of Hinduism that politico-religious outfits want to impose on citizens, Murugan was threatened with death, copies of his books were burnt, he even offered to modify offending sections of the book but was not even given a chance to reach a compromise with those outfits. He was so humiliated that he quit writing, and he had to move out of his native city with his wife for safety reasons. Even his extended family was threatened.

Many more things have been banned in the last two by the illustrious politicians too, much I can't seem to remember what. There is now talk by a fringe religious outfit to ban 'western clothes' and 'mobile phones' for women as it leads to rape...there is talk of banning jeans and phones for women in Haryana by the khap panchayats, which seem to be more powerful than the real politicians in that state. Of course this won't happen, but the moronic attitudes are here to stay.

Tomorrow they will want to ban living, breathing and eating because it interferes with their political agenda.

That is what 'banning'  has become for the Indian political class.

This post is part of the A-Z blogging challenge:  A-Z challenge

A for Anything goes!

Okay, so I am starting the month of April and the A-Z challenge with a rant.
Ranting is all I like to do nowadays.
Why do I rant so much?
Because of the bullshit I see happening around me nowadays.
Anything...anything can happen...anything goes. That anything doesn't have to be necessarily correct, and in this case, it's not. It's like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle have readjusted themselves...to make a new puzzle which doesn't make any sense anymore. It's like everything is out of place, in a constant state of chaos.
Documentaries on rape crises get banned, but politicians who make sexist comments on women don't get banned, or even arrested.
One religious nut asked his followers to dig up graves of Muslim women and have sex with them. Openly, on video, he said this, to loud applause from those followers. Nobody said anything.
Another nut made an offensive comment about women's bodies in Parliament, and refused to apologize. Another state minister said women shouldn't sit outside in the sun for protests because their skin will become dark and they won't be able to 'find a suitable groom'.
While another said every Hindu woman should have 4 kids so she can counter 'Muslim' overpopulation. He didn't get banned.
Passing a law on banning beef for religious reasons is done without much ado, but enacting a law to build the proposed 660 rape crisis centers in the country to help rape survivors is being dragged on.
Calling India's Daughter a conspiracy to shame India is okay.
Understanding that the filmmaker herself is a rape survivor trying to tell stories of others like her is not.
A successful Bollywood actress got called names just because she went to Sydney to see her boyfriend playing in a cricket match- that India lost. People go overboard, mixing their love of cricket with jingoism and made offensive comments about the actress and her boyfriend's personal lives.
While on TV, Kapil Sharma gets away with making offensive jokes on women who are either white or fat. Nobody says a word or bans him.
The Prime Minister conveniently stays quiet when his ministers make all those moronic comments- when, before he was elected PM, he had an opinion on near about EVERYTHING. Now he can't open his mouth...just like he accused his predecessor of doing. Except the predecessor was an actually decent man, if not necessarily a good politician.
Pseudo-science is being spread in the name of scientific discovery. Education is being hijacked by politico-religious elements. But nobody bans these morons who defile science in the name of...what I really don't know.
Mahatma Gandhi's killer is being celebrated as a martyr. Nobody bans these people.

So basically, as you can see, Anything goes. Just about anything.


This post is a part of the A-Z blogging challenge...http://www.a-to-zchallenge.com/

How can sexual violence be reduced/prevented?

This question, this million dollar question of how to curb the menace of sexual violence in a country like India, is a question that has nagged at every feminist, policy maker, lawmaker and cop who really care. Well, I'm also one of the feminists who always ponder about how to bring about a scenario where women can move about in the cities and towns, as and when they want to, without being reduced to fair game for rabid perverted wolves whom we call 'rapists'.
So here is a list of measures I THINK can help reduce, and even prevent, sex crimes:
1. Putting more streetlights on the roads
2. Deploy more police men on the streets, sensitize the police force to sexual violence. Making sure misogynist cops don't get employed. If they do, they must be trained to change their mindset.
3. Deploy more policewomen
4. Encourage more women to train in self-defence. open more such training centers.
5. Open more rape crisis centers, where lawyers, doctors, forensic nurses, psychologists and other professionals are deployed to help rape victims.
6. Open more forensic labs and invest money to equip these labs with proper storage facilities, devices and qualified scientists to properly collect and analyze evidence in cases of rape.
7. If cops don't register an FIR of a rape case and treat the victim insensitively, make it a punishable offence.
8. Encourage widespread discussion on sexual violence among people.
9. Arrest people who make sexist comments and blame sex crimes on women.
10. LISTEN TO FEMINISTS AND ALLOW THEM A GREATER SAY IN MATTERS REGARDING WOMEN'S FREEDOM AND SAFETY.

These are just suggestions- some change will only come about when the people at the helm take action rather than spout empty rhetoric.
PS: Will write more on this later.

Detective D in Dystopiana

 

“Shit! Did I put salt in my coffee again?” Detective Dumbass asked himself out loud, putting down the cup of coffee on the countertop, and revolving his tongue around in his mouth with an expression of disgust on his face. His taste buds were recovering from the dash of bitter they’d just got.

“Salty coffee got your tongue again, Dumbass?” Lieutenant Dickhead said, walking into the kitchenette, an octagon-shaped cabin consigned to a sticky corner of the dioctagon lobby, located in a di-octagon building with hexagon and heptagon rooms.

“Aye, Lt. Dick. I would think so,” Dumbass replied, looking from the white button labeled ‘Salt’ on the Robo-Bev, the beverage-making robot, to the red button labeled ‘Sugar’. It was the only robot in the building that was mute and deaf and ran only on its buttons being pushed.

Which button did I press? Every damn time. Of what use is a robotic coffee machine if it can’t even tell whether you’re putting sugar or salt in your drink? , he mused, scratching his head.

“There has been a murder at a seven-star hotel on 56^th. You’re on it, Dumbass. I have already sent you the details on your MacTab. I need you there ASAP,” Dickhead spoke, pouring himself a cup of coffee from the machine.

“Will anyone be joining me, sir?” Dumbass asked, looking at his own abandoned cup of coffee. His fingers reached out to pick it up from the countertop, hovered over it for a few moments of indecision, then retracted.

I will have a latte from the Mars Café on the way. At least the Coffee-Maker-cum-Waitress asks after me and chats while she makes the drink according to my specifications. If she had been even half-human I would have married her, Dumbass mused.

It was a brave new dystopian new world…where cafes were slowly going high-tech. Waitresses were replaced by multi-purpose coffee- making –and- serving robots, which interacted with individual customers as they whipped up beverages the way they wanted them. All the humans had to do was input behavioral cues and conversational material into the machine every morning.

Even the human managers had a robot each for handling financial transactions.

Mars Café was one such enterprising café, and Dumbass was a known patron.

Sometimes, if a customer happened to fall in love with any of the ‘Waitresses’, they could meet the woman ‘behind’ the machines with their consent.

Many life-long relationships were forged in these cafes.

“Detective Kickass is on her way from home to the crime scene,” Dickhead replied, taking a sip from his cup.

“Right. I should get going then, Lt. Dick,” Dumbass said, and turned around to leave.

His attention on his MacTab, he didn’t notice the leather couch in front of him and walked right onto it.

The chocolate brown couch happened to have a chocolate brown Supercat lying on it. The cat meowed loudly as Dumbass walked on it, and, in retaliation, sprang from its seat, grabbed his legs from beneath, and, lifting him, hurled him towards the door of the kitchenette.

“Damn you Supercat!” Dumb mumbled, as he slumped against the door, still reading on his MacTab.

You should have thought of that before you walked right onto me, Dumbass, the cat telepathied him.

I’m sorry, Super. I owe you a Mutant Rat, Dumb tele-replied.

You sure do, buddy, tele-replied the cat.

As Dumbass walked towards the bank of elevators leading to the ground floor, the last thought on his mind was how to get hold of one of the Rats, plaguing the New Mars City’s radioactive sewers. The rats, mutants of a radioactive generation spawned by a world immersed in nuclear waste, could do stuff . Like flying, swimming, Kung-fu, making real mince-pies out of human beings they preyed on and serving them at F-Rat parties, and teaching human anatomy to rats at Rodent Medical Schools, also established in the sewers.

                                     ***********

Dumbass walked out of the NMCPHQ building, his body automatically tilting as he reached the tilted front entrance of the building- and straightening itself as he stepped out on the sidewalk.

He put his hand up to shield his eyes from the rays glinting off the glass facades of the numerous buildings dotting the city landscape; some edifices tilting sideways like the NCMPHQ, architecturally inspired by the Leaning Tower of Pisa, others gnarled like roots, snaking like serpents or shaped like human body parts and other things. All these under a blood red sky, in which the clouds had chosen to be rose-shaped that day, the yellow sun standing out with its luminescence.

BAM!

“What the hell!” Dumb shouted as his legs buckled beneath him and his butt collided with a clang on a smooth metal surface.

“SQUAR! Again!” he added, realizing he was lying spread-eagled on the bonnet of the robotic squad car, a fleet of which was owned by the police department.

“You summoned me here! What am I supposed to do if you’re in my way!” SQUAR boomed in reply.

Dumbass realized the hand holding his MacTab had a finger on the green button which, when pressed, made the car fly out of the garage and right in front of the cop. Without realizing it, he had summoned the car and it had flew into him from behind.

“Absent-minded as usual, Dumb,” the car chirped, as a pair of robotic hands emerged from the sides of the vehicle, grabbed him by the waist, and placed him snugly into the driver’s seat.

“Yeah yeah. Off to 66^th, SQUAR,” Dumb ordered in reply.

The car sped away, flying five feet above the ground.

 

                                 **********

“Dumb! Where the hell where you? I’ve been calling you for ages!” Detective Kickass, a macho woman in her early twenties yelled at her partner as he stepped out of the car, which was resting on the ground.

“I’m sorry…I confused 56^th Street for 66^th, and had to drive all the way back. You called?” he asked, looking at his MacTab.

“Yeah…about 20 times!” Kickass replied.

Dumb saw that his partner had actually called him 25 times; he hadn’t realized it because his tab, lying on the passenger seat, was in Silent mode. He had put it on Silent the previous night while going to bed, and forgotten to switch back to Loud that morning.

“I’m so sorry…you’re not gonna punch me, are you?” asked Dumb, to the woman who was a certified expert in 7 types of martial arts, five time World Champion in Physical Combat and one of the strongest women in the world. Her physical prowess was due to Peptide X, a supplement she took every day and owned in plenty- courtesy of being related, by marriage, to a Martian family whose multi-planetary pharmaceutical company made Peptide X. The formulation gave its human consumers super-human strength.

‘That’s why Detective Kickass doesn’t have any boyfriends’ a journalist had written unkindly once.

“No…I’m not gonna punch you. Let’s go inside,” she replied.

                                       **********

“There’s a lot of heat on the NMPD with this murder,” Kickass commented, as she and Dumbass looked at the mutilated body floating in mid-air in an ornate suite of the Hotel Saturn-Solaris.

“I know,” Dumb commented.

The body, whose flesh was slowly melting and dripping like candle wax on to the ground, was that of Mrs. Snob Elitist, wife of spaceship mogul Mr. Rich Bastard-Elitist. Red vapors emanated from her mouth and mixed with the air.

The city Mayor Good-for-nothing, a good friend of Mr. Elitist, was pressurizing Chief Kiss-Ass of the NMPD, who was in turn nagging Captain Corrupt-Parasite, who was, in turn, forcing Lt. Dickhead to catch the killer and solve the case quickly.

“Which is why we are going to have to act very fast, I suppose,” Dumbass commented, as the forensic pathologist, Dr. Chucklehead, came into view.

“Yes we do. How’d she die, Doc?” Kickass asked him.

“She has probably been lasered to death by a high-powered instrument, Detective. All her internal organs have probably already started powderizing and her blood has vaporized, as you can see. We will have to take her to the lab before she turns to biologic dust and we lose vital evidence,” Chucklehead replied. No one understood where Chucklehead got his name, because his facial muscles were always contorted in a grim expression, and his voice was deep and had a somber quality.

“Yes please, Doc,” Kickass said.

As the detectives examined the evidence being lifted by the Forensic Science Investigators in blue overalls, the coroner’s team, dressed in green baggy suits, arrived to take the body away.

“Dumb! Look over there! What’s happening?” Kickass commented, pointing to where the coroner’s team stood around the corpse.

Dumb looked to where she pointed, and his eyes widened in surprise.

None of the green-suited people were moving. They were also suspended in mid air like the corpse, their hands limp at their sides, their legs dangling precariously, and a number of red rays were coming in from a window, engulfing the team.

The FSIs on that side of the room were crouched on the ground, looking fearfully at the weird tableaux.

“What is that? We must go to help!” Dumb shouted, darting forward.

“Shhhhh! Shut up Dumb! Can’t you see these are laser rays? They’re coming from outside…we’ll be roasted if we as much as step anywhere them!” Kickass whispered, pulling Dumb back by the collar of his shirt and pulling them both to the ground.

“Who’s doing this, and why?” Dumb whispered.

“Didn’t you hear Chucklehead? Snob Elitist was murdered with a high-powered laser machine…by someone who doesn’t want us to investigate further and find out what happened…they probably want to kill us all and probably destroy all evidence by lasering this place and Snob’s body to bits. Let’s not alert them to our presence,” Kickass explained.

“Absolutely correct, Detective Kickass,” Chucklehead whispered from a little way off, huddled beneath a window.

Suddenly, a low rumbling sound came out of nowhere. This was followed by the suspended green-suited people being bombarded by more rays, and their suits started puncturing with numerous lacerations.

Cracks started to appear in the wall opposite to where Kickass and Dumbass lay, and the people crouching on the ground hurriedly scuttled over to where they were.

“They’re trying to kill all of us, Detective Kickass. What do we do?” Chucklehead said in a loud whisper.

“We need to get out of here. It has through be through that window, Doc. Come on, jump out and lead the way. Come on! Everybody, buckle up!” Kickass instructed, pointing to the window above Chucklehead

“This is the 115^th floor, for God’s sake! We’ll all fall to our deaths!”

“We’ll summon our SQUARs…we have plenty of space to accommodate everyone. Now! Before we all liquefy to death!” Kickass shouted, running to the window and pressing the green button on her tab. Dumb did the same, as other walls started to develop cracks too and the rumbling grew louder.

As the two SQUARs arrived outside the window and opened their doors, Kickass pulled people and helped them get in the car, where a large secret cabin would open up in the rear section.

When they had taken everyone who wasn’t already caught by the laser, Kickass and Dumbass jumped into their cars.

“To the NMPD!” they both shouted together, and the cars, emitting a flash of fire from its tapered tail-end, sped away.

Moments later, the laser rays vanished, the rumbling stopped, and the room became silent again. All the humans, including the corpse, melted into a fluid state as another, larger green ray entered through a large hole in the wall.

And the room exploded with a BANG, vaporizing everything it contained, and the rooms within its immediate periphery.

A huge, egg-shaped vehicle, floating at a safe distance from the 115^th floor of Saturn-Solaris, flew away into the sky.