Notes of Neglect.

It has been happening forever- whenever there is a problem, the silent and almost invariably, the innocent has to suffer the most. Until, of course, nature turns nemesis. And when a city with an area of just a little over 500 square kilometres has to house a population of over a million, there is a problem. A big one at that. Resources are pushed to a catastrophic  hilt till finally everything starts to fall apart and threatens to engulf with it all that ever was- the bubble of growth, the façade of modernization and the pretense of development.

Guwahati is a town in evolution. From a small sleepy town of the 80s to the hub of trade and commerce of North East India that it is today, the transformation has been drastic and very palpable.The Chief Minister would proudly add that it is, in fact, the 5^th fastest growing city in the country. The development is encouraging and has actually opened up a world of avenues in the city with international retail chains setting shops everywhere in the city. Very impressive indeed for a place where the waters of the great river that flows through it, had for so long, reeked of neglect and from the rest of the country

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But almost ironically, Deepor Beel, an abandoned channel of the might river itself and a wetland of immense significance for the city stinks of apathy from its own people now. An unexpected population explosion and its ugly aftermath have taken its toll on the lone Ramsar site of the state and the consequences are for all to be seen and felt today. A very dangerous development for the city that has been ,over the past decade or so, moving a tad too fast.

Beel means a wetland or a large aquatic body in Assamese and Deepor Beel is one of the largest and most important riverine wetlands in Assam's Brahmaputra valley and is representative of the wetlands found within the Burma Monsoon Forest biogeographic region. Spread over an area of 41.4 square kilometeres with varying depths of 4 meteres to 1 metre, this freshwater wetland is home to a diverse range of flora and fauna. The fauna here includes many an International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) red listed species such as the Spot-billed Pelican ,the  Baers Pochard , the  Lesser Adjutant Stork , the  Pallas’s Sea Eagle, the Slender-billed Vulture , the Ferruginous Duck , the Greater Adjutant Stork ,the Asiatic Elephant ,the  Irriwaddy Squirrel, and the Hoolock Gibbon. Deepor Beel also happens to be one of the largest staging sites for migratory birds in India and a winter morning here is any avian fauna enthusiast’s dream or at least, used to be.

A dump yard right next to Deepor Beel

The Beel, bluntly put, is in shambles today. Reduced to a dump yard of a callous city, the filth in the lake cuts a pathetic picture.  A newly constructed railroad, along the southern  boundary of Deepor Beel, fragments the two previously dependent ecosystems, Deepor Beel and Rani/ Garbhanga Reserved Forests,  a development  that could spell disaster for the already much abused wetland. Unplanned and non-regulated fishing practices are making things worse. And to top it all, since the city has no space left , industrial and residential developments are starting to proliferate a little too close to the wetland. And as for the mayhem we as a species are capable of inflicting on nature, the lesser  said or written about it, the better it is .With humans at action, poaching and soil cutting within the wetland have also become rampantly common.

Deepor Beel is dying a slow and painful death. What is even sadder is that it will probably fade off noiselessly without the rest of the country ever having known of its existence, like so many other things in the state of Assam. The helpless pleas of the Beel for some attention have, for long, muffled by the bombs and grenades of the ULFA and the NDFB for perhaps, that is what we, as a race wanted the world to know and acknowledge us for. And now, beneath the comatose splendor of showrooms of designer labels and the sleek interiors of multi cuisine restaurants, what is actually ours is suffering under the heartless indifference of its own people.  If the Beel is to die, which it will in the present scheme of things, the blotch of apathy and ungratefulness on the collective consciousness of the state would stay with us to haunt us forever.   The Beel has to be saved, for it is indispensable to our existence as a state and more importantly, as a part of Mother Nature.

Of Hopes over Hate

  The Siliguri-Katihar line with stops, which are mostly obscure and hardly heard of small towns and even smaller villages, was one of the last surviving metre gauge lines in mainland India, with conversion work having completed only this year . Three stations off Siliguri, is another such non-descript dusty stop – at least on the face of it. But, then this village on the Terai region at the base of the Himalayas has many stories hidden in the dust of its pastoral humdrumness - all eerie ones though. It is where the first spark of a fire that was to engulf the whole region and, much beyond, over the next four decades was lit. The village is a part of urban folklore today for the most massive anti- establishment movement of Independent India takes its name from it. Naxalbari has moved on since that exceptionally hot summer of 1967 but the heat can be still be very much felt in parts of neighbouring Jharkhand, the state I’ve been living in for the past two and a half years now.

 More than 6000 deaths in just the last twenty years and loss of human spirit not estimable in cold numbers, in the most unambiguous fashion suggests, that something is seriously wrong with the bubble of democracy and equality we as a country have become so smugly comfortable with over the years.  I have very consciously decided not to include too many figures, for in the absoluteness of them, a lot that is not tamable in them goes unnoticed and because the problem is more profound- way beyond what rigid statistical projections can ever reveal. They blow up Panchayats offices and schools; the forces rape their women. Police vehicles are blown up by their land mines; their leaders are killed in encounters. Surely, this is not what the largest democracy in the world should breed or put more politically correctly, let be bred. 

I’m reminded of a conversation with a paramilitary personal on a train a few months back. Both of us did not have tickets and needed some sleep. I had to go attend classes the next morning; he had to fight a war. Finally, both of us talked the night away. He said he knew the people he was actually fighting weren’t his real enemy; it’s only the people who didn’t want the fighting to ever end. And unfortunately, they are the ones who matter. Every order of arms count, every kill is a step towards political advantage. I know he is honest, for people who’ve seem death from as close as he has, usually are. His best friend, he said rather dispassionately, was shot in the head the previous week. They say you’ve got to put emotions in the backburner when you’re a soldier but a soldier, as he morosely maintained throughout, fights for his countrymen, not against them according to the whims and fancies of some Madarchod Neta. The bloodshot eyes get even bloodier with rage. The sleep, I realize, has long gone.

No one is right. Not them, not the forces, not our leaders. Not, the least, us. Newspapers carrying front page reports of sabotage by them and encounters by the police, condemned during the course of the morning tea are used to  put Chakna on for the whiskey at night as Sarah Leone’s  pelvic thrusts laden dance moves in an episode in Big Boss is discussed. We’ve failed as a democracy, as a nation and most importantly as humans and we are answerable to kids whose schools are used as base camps for paramilitary forces, kids who are thrust guns even before they can hold a pen properly. In fact, there are so many layers to this tale of tragedy and trauma that every peeled off layer lets way to another layer we are so not ready for. What essentially began as a farmers’ emancipation movement has somewhere, amidst the merciless violence and hypocritical diplomacy, spiraled into a morbid malaise whose cure seems dauntingly tough. The class battles will not be over so soon, Mao Zedong’s war sermons will not whimper off so easily but an effort has to be made to heal the wounds and soothe nerves- an effort that does not reek of aluminum and mica interests.

 

Jharkhand is a state of sad paradoxes. It accounts for more almost ninety percent of the country’s mica and cooking coal deposits but remains one of the most economically backward regions of the country. The crippling malady of Naxalism coupled with a notoriously corrupt political class has plagued progress in a way that even hurts a blasé outsider like me. Blasé I call myself for in those initial days of college, I had honestly hated the place but then like all things that start to grow on you slowly and sweetly, Jharkhand is an indispensible part of me now. It’s my second home- it’s the place I’ve spent some of the most important years of life and have made bonds for life. For Jharkhand’s sake, I know, the bloodshed has to end. And we have to show the way- the pain has to be relieved, the anger has to be pacified and the void has to be filled. We’ve all made our share of mistakes, but we can still make up for them. Grass root connections will reinstall the belief in our country once again and I’m sure the effort is well worth it.  Guns and grenades will hurt us all for an eye for an eye still makes the world blind.

THE MAKING OF TWINKLING STARS: THE UNCUT ALTERBLUES VERSION.

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

 How I wonder what you are.

 Up above the world so high,

 Like a diamond in the sky.

When Jane Taylor, in the early nineteenth century, on a clear English evening, must have composed her poem ‘The Star’, the opening verses of which are quoted above, I can say with surety ( the extreme kind which always deserts me these days in vivas and tests), she would not have fathomed in a million light years (we’re talking about stars and things heavenly you see!) that more than two centuries later and five thousand miles away in India, for kids who can’t even answer nature’s calls on their own, being able to recite her poem would be the first  step towards becoming  a bright shining star (like a diamond that is) in life.

My cousin had given birth to a baby boy and by the time I got to see him after two and a half years I realized the being- a- baby and -just -chilling period was already over for him. My cousin and her husband both worked and so when my cousin’s maternity leave came to an end, off went our baby boy to a kindergarten. After all, in a country where you have to score hundred percent marks to get into your desired college, it is always better to start early. All fine till there. But, with the kindergarten, came the first onus of performance on our baby boy. Records of cute little nursery rhymes about sheep and stars, played in the tape in the children’s garden - that’s what a kindergarten literally means (Germans and their fancy names!!) and fuelled up his teacher’s and parents’ imagination more than his. And it was decided; our baby boy had to learn to recite at least one of the rhymes, preferably, one about the stars. (Probably because it has the highest mass appeal, I guess)

I am the guest of honour but our baby boy is just not in the mood today. No amount of cajoling would coerce him to recite this poem about twinkling stars. The parents are embarrassed. Mother feels let down; fine it’s just me today but imagine what would have happened if one of her colleagues had come home and our baby boy just refused to give a performance. Mrs. Sharma’s three year old daughter could after all, recite not one but three full length poems- one about the stars, the other about this mischievous little boy Johnny and of course, the one about the black sheep. “I don’t know what’s wrong today; he does it so well on other days you know. Ms. Nidhi, his language teacher even gave him an A+”, my cousin tries to explain in the defense of our baby boy, now happy at being finally let off to ride his tricycle.

Our country is full of such baby boys and yes, girls too (lest you should start calling me an MCP or something now) with overzealous parents and it is on a very serious note, bothersome. Well, we Indians are smart people in general as is evident from the scores of white-collared professionals we have all over the world and riding on that bit of awareness, parents tend to push their kids a tad too much, resulting in all the originality and imaginativeness being sapped out of our baby boys (yea girls too!) even before they could actually start using it. For instance, a kid who is forced to memorise and recite a poem he is not old enough to understand and appreciate will develop an aversion to poetry without ever having known the joy and beauty of poetry.

 When a Delhi University college announced cent percent cutoffs for a certain course sending students (more like parents I suppose) into a tizzy, the media went overdrive with talk shows and articles analyzing the root of all of it. And as it always is in India, the culprit de- chief was unanimously agreed upon as the System. The System is always convenient to put all the blame on. No one is directly accountable and we can happily keep playing our national sport of blame game .Hunky Dory for one and all and yes of, course the government should do something no!!(The leftists have just found another leverage point in the inflation issue man!!). We shall never acknowledge that it is us who are responsible for the mayhem. Instead of putting in lakhs of capitation fees to private institutions (the donation colleges as they are known in the middle class) to buy a sit for their baby boy (well, he’s still a baby for his parents) in a course he wasn’t good enough to get into on merit, parents should realize that their baby boy is just not meant for that course and he might as well do something he is genuinely interested in and is good at. For too long now our parents have been deciding what colour collar we wear in life and we end up wearing their misfitting clothes.

Before I start sounding all preachy and break all the rules of the blog, I must retire for this time. But yes, follow your heart folks. It comes from someone who didn’t (I don’t need tissues man!).

Twinkle, twinkle, little star,

I shall be there one day where you are.

Up above the world so high,

And keep writing and writing till I die!

P.S. I hope Jane Taylor’s great great granddaughter’s great great granddaughter doesn’t sue me now! That’d be great for the blog though!

The Tale of two Deities - Not Dickens

Cricket is the flavour of the season. Nothing from a heart wrenching natural disaster in a neighbouring nation to a government shaking expose in our own have been able to steal away the storm. Well, talking of storms, the assembly elections scheduled for this month back in my home state has stirred up quite a one. The blog, though, has been rather dormant over the last month or so owing to a range of reasons from mundane mid semester evaluations to an impulsive holiday (I would like myself and everyone else who bothers to believe that I’ve kept busy).

It’s been a nice period though albeit the minor physical glitches I’ve had to encounter. The cricket, a passion that has as a passion withstood all the test of time, and friends together have gladdened my heart like nothing else has for quite some time. Amidst all that, a lot has been going through in my mind regarding statures of certain people. People whom I’ve been influenced by and have discussed at length about.

In fact to be narrowing down, it’s just two of them. Both fit into the typical rags to riches fairytale stories.  Both of them are honest hard workers. But such has been the turn of events over the past couple of weeks; one looks slightly more human to me now while the other has so totally reinforced his God like image of his in my head. To catch a starry eyed kid’s imagination is one thing but to constantly surpass his sky high expectations takes some doing (something even Shahrukh Khan would acknowledge as a big deal!) and that is exactly what the latter has been doing unfailingly for what seems forever now.

Cutting the pronouns induced climax short; these two great men do have names- Manmohan Singh and Sachin Tendulkar respectively. From two walks of life as varied as they come, they are connected by the fact that both of them have been hugely responsible for catapulting our country into the big league. And by my yardstick (heck it’s my blog so I can have one); you know you are in the league when kids of your country have the audacity to dream and dream big and the last two decades have been testimony to the phenomena of Indians dreaming big and going all out to achieve them. Manmohan Singh’s masterstroke of liberalisation and privatisation (terms I admit I do not understand inside out) in the early 1990s as the finance minister of the country revived the economy of the country, the benefits of which we are still reaping. Sachin Tendulkar on the other hand is probably our best ambassador of anything. Most importantly both these geniuses are the best at what they do; a fact acknowledged and respected by peers the world over.

But what made me set out to write about them in the first place apart from the fact that the blog needed to be updated are two events that took place on the same fateful day some two weeks back. A late morning it was for me. And like the first thing you normally do on a holiday morning (no I am not the early morning jogging kind), I switched on the TV without having had anything specific to watch. That is when I happened to stumble upon Manmohan Singh participating in an interactive talk session and vociferously (yes he was vociferous by his modest standards) washing his hands off from the recently revealed Wikileaks( I’m surprised this one still stumps MS Word) cable alleging  that the Congress had bought  trust votes on the floor of the house. If the expose wasn’t startling enough, Manmohan Singh’s attitude was a rude shock. Someone whom I’ve always looked up to, Singh’s demeanour was plain disappointing and genuinely saddened me. As the official head of the cabinet, the prime minister ought to have taken full moral responsibility of the entire issue. It wouldn’t have been easy for sure but I had honestly expected the Prime Minister to do better than what he did.

Barely three hours from then, my second protagonist touched the other end of the spectrum by just walking off the crease when he was judged not out by the umpire. An action made all the more great by the fact that it was a World Cup match and the man needed a century more to complete 100 international centuries- an achievement unfathomable for most mortals. Preaching the righteous path in the comforts of your drawing room is alright but to ride the right route when the stakes are high is what matters. Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar made a whole nation proud that day by actually being a live example of what we as a country claim to stand for but have awfully failed to back up with actions - honesty and values. If Manmohan Singh was a letdown, Sachin more than made it up.

Quite an irony actually.  You would any day expect a policy maker to be more honest than a sportsperson!

 But then this is India where people juggle between being holy men and porn stars and you have temples in respect of Boyllwood stars. (MS Word just offered me Hollywood as a replacement for Bollywood) Politics again lost to cricket like it always has in India but I’m sure there is much more in store from both these great men. Manmohan Singh has a lot more mettle which he shall prove very soon. Meanwhile, I hope we kick some Sri Lankan ass today and yes, the 100^th ton finally comes from the shorter of the two great men.

King Of Limbs: Ingenious Ambitious. Radiohead

 Exams were closing in and it was time for implementing my new “I-am-disciplined-and-I-have-to-dig-my-text-this-time-at-least-during-the-exams” plan that I devised during the winter break (it’s not funny, even the name, yes). There had been a lot of music practice in the first month of the college and so I had already had fun and it was time to commence preparations for the first series of embarrassing tests. In some idle time, retreating back to my old habits, I logged into Facebook only to find the most interesting status update by JD. “The Day After Tomorrow, is the biggest album release since I started following music!” I remember vividly. How could I forget it? That’s where it all started. The next microsecond I was interrogating him, only to realise that he was talking about Radiohead’s 8th studio album; King of Limbs. Now that was one big piece of news, BIG (And that’s when you curse them for not making any basic I-AM-PSYCHED smiley and resort to using the archetypal CAPS-LOCK to express your emotions) Two days from now. Now that is the worst thing that can happen to a Radiohead fan, had I known it was coming out in a month I would have chilled, the extra “procrastination-nylase”enzyme secreting organ of my body would have helped me deal with the excitement but it was just two days from then and that is bad news! The restlessness, it is exactly similar to the one you have when your mother says “When you return from school, I will make you your favourite Blueberry cheese cake and that chicken steak from the Top Chef” and sees you off. The only thing you can do is not think about it, but if you have similar brain cells as I do, ones that force you to think in exactly the opposite direction and then laugh at you, you end up with a watering-mouth for the rest of the day.

The next night at 00:30, someone shared a link on the intranet, the almighty DC++, entitled “Radiohead- King Of Limbs (2011)”. I was flabbergasted; it could’ve either been leaked or the album's digital version had been pulled back one day and released. Dumbfounded I sat when I came to know that the album was up on their website for a set price but it suddenly all became clear. Radiohead were smart, that was a marketing strategy. It gave fans a sense of achievement, as people who were lucky enough to have checked their website a day earlier would be amongst the first few prestigious people devouring ‘King Of Limbs’. And there I was, devouring the successor of one of the greatest alternative-rock albums."

Alright there is a huge difference between liking and respecting a certain album. And Radiohead is one band that is respected by every person who likes them. They not only make you like their music but inspire you to contemplate the meaning. There are very few 21st century bands that leave an effect on the genre of music they play, and the first name that comes to my mind is Radiohead. Constantly drifting away from the comfort zone of the listeners, without worrying much about commercial success, they have come up with material that has been the first of its kind; fresh and stimulating. That is the first thing I would say about King Of Limbs in this casual album review of mine.

The first thing that you want to do with a Radiohead album now is compare it with their previous work and be proved wrong all the time. I did that too. I had Kid A in mind when I heard it for the first time, but yet again ‘Yorke and Co’ are way too talented. You could possibly compare it to the Amnesiac in terms of the ‘shift’ in the sound with respect to its predecessor (Kid A in this case, and the legendary In Rainbows to the recent album). King Of Limbs is very different from the guitar laden In Rainbows. Jazzier percussion/grooves, this one too has that same layered sound, but this time the texture is richer. It kind of complements In Rainbows. Or let me say it kind of picks up from where In Rainbows left suddenly evolving into something completely different.

Before going any further I would make a suggestion that might sound immature but definitely not senseless. Listen to this album on good earphones or an amazing stereo, the sound is abstract like any other album and this one is all about the electronic texture and the layers, unlike the catchy In Rainbows. The rattling drums and the bass lines won’t make sense if you don’t have good equipment to use. (I don’t really know a lot of technical terms but then I will be using texture and layering whenever I want to sound intelligent, and also because they really make sense!) Highlights of the album? Phil Selway, I always wonder how this guy comes with all those grooves and unusual time signatures. He also manages to execute them immaculately live. Second, yes, the dominant force of the band, Thom Yorke, sounds as young as ever. His falsetto still sounds the best and it brings pleasant memories of Jeff Buckley, whom Yorke states as a major influence.

‘Bloom’, the opener certainly takes off from where the last track on In Rainbows, Videotape left. I tried doing this (exams over, I have loads of free time now) I played Videotape once followed immediately by Bloom. The piano intro sets the mood, you are expecting something like Videotape and then start these staccato drums similar to 15 Step and a lot of other Radiohead songs but the rhythm is completely different, I couldn’t help relating it to the rhythm and the sound of the Indian railways. Haha, strange but it continues throughout the song with Yorke’s signature style of stretching the vowels when he sings “Open Your Mouth Wide”. The song is heady. Maybe not initially but after you listen to it multiple times.

Next in line is ‘Morning Mr. Magpie’ with a very catchy intro; I again couldn’t resist comparing and thought it would turn out like Bodysnatchers, one of my favourite tracks on In Rainbows. But it turns out to be pleasantly different. Infact it sounds like a tribal song because of the distinctly tribal beats. ‘Morning Mr. Magpie’ is all about how awesome the bass, the palm-muted guitars and Yorke’s wailing vocals blend. Superb energy, superb track.

‘Little By Little’, I think will make an awesome background track for a detective movie. I love the feel of this song. Finally Thom Yorke’s vocals stand out. Now it’s like Yorke singing and the rest of the band playing, like more of a duel. Nice jazzy track, probably will not linger in your head but yes worth it, adds to the continuity of the album and does justice to the build up leading to the band’s only single as of now ‘The Lotus Flower’ and to all the other songs that follow.

The next track is ‘Feral’ and yes I’ve had discussions with my friends, I agree Radiohead’s trying to be too ambitious with this one. I heard ‘Feral’ possibly with an intention of liking it but I think I haven’t been able to. It’s something you don’t pay attention to because everything has been so nice till now. So you let it pass thinking you will listen to it carefully later and don’t really end up hating it. Yes now that is something big Radiohead has achieved. They have garnered this understanding with the fans, which doesn’t really make the fans dislike any of their content. You always feel like listening to it again if you don’t like it, the mind doesn’t really accept any unattractive Radiohead-product because of the reputation they have, because of the fact that they have managed to grow with each album exponentially. 

Now comes the first single of the album, the catchiest song ‘The Lotus Flower’. I personally loved the album this track onwards a lot. The bass line is chic and the vocal melody is really appealing, Thom Yorke’s falsetto sounds relaxed, meditative. Definitely a sing along song but make sure you are still playing this album on your amazing stereo or high quality earphones. It sounds astounding on a good quality woofer. However what makes the song really special is the video. Radiohead continues to make sad videos of amazing songs. Yorke is all over the place, wobbling and doing his awkward dance moves. He has lost weight and hair, which is evident when he takes his hat off while doing those amusing dance moves. I wasn’t really surprised to see Thom Yorke do this after seeing most of his highly energetic movements on stage and his love for electronic dance music. But I am sure this is one of those tracks that pops up in your head when you think of King Of Limbs, I've heard it around 20 odd times and I have liked it everytime.

6th and the best track of the album is ‘Codex’. A “hauntingly beautiful” piano ballad that comprises of Thom Yorke’s echoing falsettos layered by horns and muffled beats. Listen to this song while sleeping, really peaceful. It is exactly something you require after a long tiring day, just close your eyes and notice each and everything about the song; the lyrics, beautiful amalgamation of the falsettos and the horns and most importantly the mood of the song. It somewhat reminded me of Coldplay, the signature Chris Martin piano-work. But then yes Coldplay themselves have stated Radiohead as their biggest influence ever.

‘Give Up The Ghost’ would’ve been the perfect song to end this album. Yet another haunting track. The acoustic guitar, mild percussion and the reverb soaked vocals with slight distortion sound beautiful together. If it's only you, your acoustic guitar and your terrace at night, then its 'Give Up The Ghost'.  ‘Separator’ the 8th and the last track of the album didn’t really appeal to me much, it left the album slightly incomplete according to me. There was nothing wrong about it, the guitars were more pronounced, I loved how it ended with the delay but I was expecting a hidden track or a small trippy ending music piece maybe after a 30 second silence or something. But yet again Radiohead managed to leave me bewildered with this one.

I agree it is a very short record; some 38 odd minutes, especially after the double-album In Rainbows. But still it doesn’t sound incomplete except for the ending maybe. The whole album is interconnected. Cleverly cleaved into a chaotic first half featuring probably the best percussions by Phil Selway till date and the second half is from where Thom Yorke, one of the greatest frontman ever, takes off. King Of Limbs features some of Yorke’s best work as well, the vocal melodies are really inventive and this album sounds like no other Radiohead project. On "Little By Little" they hint Yorke's solo-work Eraser and Amnesiac on others but it is still distinctly different.They also don’t manage to make an evident distinction between the two halves that seem to be there; it is a nice continuation of one into the other. You cannot hence appreciate or rather unfold all the aspects of the album if you don’t listen to it according to the track-list, one after the other. And because of the layers, you always observe something different each time you hear it, so this is definitely not something that is straightforward. I agree you have to listen to it multiple times but it is worth it. Radiohead fans will love it, but it might not be an album which you listen to and become a Radiohead fan at once.

I really think you should go and get it. Radiohead has managed to deliver the sound of the future and they deserve to be touted as the greatest alternative rock band of the world.

Our choice, Our lives.

P for pistol. P for power. And in India if you have both, you have it all. After all it’s probably the only democracy in the world where you can go Scot free after shooting someone in the head in front of three hundred people. Or for that matter, massacring innocent school children for turning out in the Independence Day parade of the country they live in.

A country with an extremely short lived public memory, we are quick to jump on the bandwagon but equally fast to forget too. We are people who wear our hearts proudly in our sleeves. Driven by passion , our hearts invariably rule over our minds and as Indians, we are probably the most self righteous race in the world and claim to have a clear idea of what is morally correct and what is not. Almost funny as we have what is officially the most unsafe city for women in the world as our national capital. The Jessica Lals and the Priyadarshini Mattoos are sad testimonies to the fact that amidst all the tall claims of being the culturally most evolved nation of the world something, somewhere has gone horribly wrong.

Abuse of power is so common that it is perceived as routine today. A top cop of one of the most prosperous states of the country repeatedly sexually abuses a teenager, young enough to be his daughter, ultimately forcing her to commit suicide. A minister’s son has the audacity to yank out a gun in front of hundreds of people just because the barmaid rightfully refused him his drink and then has the luxury of being defended by one of the best lawyers of the country, ironically also a former union law minister. Whether it’s the local municipal collector’s car being parked in a no parking zone or the rich businessman’s drunken son’s latest sports car running over sleeping people on the road, such cases are countless and reflect India’s power population’s brazen contempt for laws.

And back home in the beautiful north eastern state of Assam from where I belong and take pride in, it definitely defies my logic as to how a certain Arabinda Rajkhowa was so easily let off by the state government and more surprisingly forgiven by the people of Assam as is evident from the hero’s welcome he was accorded with at a lot of places in the state after his release. Torturing and killing thousands of innocent people on pretexts so obnoxious and juvenile, it hardly takes rocket science to establish that the motives of the organisation (read terrorist outfit) that Rajkhowa chaired had changed drastically over the years. Both the money laundered from various sources in the name of the ‘War Chest’ of the organisation and the power accumulated through a spate of fear inducing activities had got into the heads of the self proclaimed revolutionaries giving them the license to kill at will.

From the landmark ‘Pink Chaddi’ campaign to protest against the lunacies of an outrageous religious fundamentalist to candle light processions disapproving the faulty judicial system of the country, the youth has pitched in vociferously. Time and again, Generation Y has reiterated that Chalta Nahi Hai. Not anymore. A new wave is slowly but surely setting in. The winds of change are blowing. It’s high time we buckle up, pull up our socks. And it has to be a deliberate decision. A choice we have to make- whether to silently take in our sisters, friends and girlfriends being groped and touched by someone just because he has power in his head and a pistol in his hands or to give it back. A decision as to if we will let a bunch of uneducated goons dictate terms on the basis of their petty whims and fancies, killing and bombing the very people they had supposedly set out to emancipate in the first place or fight back. It’s a decision that will shape the future-ours as well as the nation’s. A choice that we the people will have to make –to keep suffering silently as we always have or fight for our rights. And this choice will decide where we stand as citizens of a civilised country and, of course, as humans.

United we write, divided we..err...

The year was 2007. The month probably August or perhaps even September. It could not be October. I clearly recall the stickiness adding to the uneasiness of the situation. The date I do not remember. Two teenagers, just out of high school, were discussing ‘business sense’ against the backdrop of a freshly painted yellow house adorned by a big blue board which read ‘Individual Maths Classes for IIT –JEE by....’Like all other discussions between 16 year olds, which when faced with the slightest of difference of opinions turn into full fledged wars, this one too was heading the wrong way. Egged on by a few other boys also waiting for the Maths tutor who claimed to be an IIT Bombay alumnus (something always debated upon during the entire length of the course specially on days where a particularly peculiar function would just refuse to get integrated by him), all of the same age who though were morally mature enough to know that the tension in arguments like this one needed to be diffused immediately to avoid serious damage but not grown up enough yet to resist the fun of seeing a few blows and slaps, the two of them directed all they knew anything even remotely relevant to the topic towards ascertaining supremacy over one another. And as it almost invariably is with such arguments, this too ended prematurely with the arrival of the IIT Bombay pass out maths tutor (since there is no concrete contradictory evidence as such, we give the man the benefit of doubt) without any consent reached at. Incidentally, this happened to be the first time the two had seen of each other.

As fate would have it which in this case acted in the form of private Maths Coaching Classes to aid the IIT Coaching Classroom Classes (pun intended), the two of them kept meeting again and again. And with time, the hostility let way for a subtle friendship. The place, the schedule didn’t allow friendships. But between Tutorial Sheets and Extra Classes, the most powerful human emotion almost always took over. In an alien and unfriendly atmosphere of Integral Calculus and Binomial Theorem, a passion for rock music and an unwavering devotion to Chelsea brought the two of them close too. From chance encounters at the departmental store to the occasional visit to each other’s rooms, the two started meeting up more often for no reasons obvious; something people termed as time wastage and considered as one of the gravest errors an IIT aspirant could commit in this town called Kota where everything that people cared for began and ended with the Indian Institutes of Technology. An idea both of them were not comfortable with for it was beyond them to sit in their stingy rooms for hours at a stretch and just do math but that’s another story.

The two hellish years passed, albeit painfully slowly, like all bad things in life. Both failed their joint entrance exams for admissions into the IITs.  But nevertheless both got admitted into decent engineering colleges on merit. The story wasn’t over. After sharing their horrid experiences with the much glorified aspects “engineering” they came to know they had much more in common. Like any other not-so-grown-up person cursing the present situation, they claimed that they belonged to the more creative side of this universe (or rather the opposite of what they were in), even ‘writing’ got them high, much more than any of the rusty lathe machines and binary mathematics. The resonance was most pronounced and they knew what they had to do. Reserve a space to put down their thoughts. Maybe just in order to look back at it in the future and laugh at the immaturity the thoughts bore or maybe just for the love of writing. Or maybe just in order to get a ‘life’. The easiest way was to start a blog and that looked COOL, people writing blogs have always been considered to be cool so why not?  Much water has flown in the Chambal (for those of you who don’t know- The Chambal is a river that flows through the town of Kota and again the pun is intended) since that juvenile debate on their first meeting. The two of them or rather the two of us –Siddharth Kotwal and Arunabh Saikia, have moved over Rock and the Blues is what really gets us on now, Chelsea is in the middle of one of its worst ever phases but we still remain faithful to the Blues, Blues music on the other side is well just like ‘crack cocaine’ for us. Connected by the Blues and separated by what we don’t really care; here we come again for this new blog of ours where we will discuss everything from spiritualism to sex!

Happy Reading Guys!! Cheers!!