I have written this poem “Identity” and received many interesting responses in my comment box. Those responses prompted me to write another post.

I don’t have any problem with different cultures and people assimilating these cultures. In fact this assimilation opens our mind and enriches us in many ways. This assimilation is happening since time immemorial in India. We even embraced our conquerers and ultimately they lost themselves completely and became one with us. India had been invaded by the Greeks (Yavanas), Huns (Hunas), Shakas and Kushanas. These invaders were completely absorbed into the existing Indian society. Even the memory of their ever having been foreign
invaders was wiped out. Today if we try to hunt for Kushana, or Shaka blood, we will not find a single trace to begin with. So my poem was not against assimilation of different ideas and cultures. That SHOULD always be WELCOMED.

What makes me wonder is in eating habits, we prefer to be “seen” eating in McDonald’s or Huts or Dominos. We stop being an American after tasting theirs food. Is this America all about? What about their civic sense and cleanliness? What about their observing traffic rules? Oh! Here our Indian-ness leaps in every corner of the road. How many red lights we jump is machismo in purest form. So very Indian, so desi! We felt like a man when breaking speed limit. We are proud of our ignorance of Zebra crossing. These are minor things for us.

When we are choosing girlfriends/boyfriends, Mumma / Puppa, PLEASE don’t interfere. It’s my life. But when we are getting married, please arrange for the dowry, we want it desperately. All my life, Mummy/Daddy, we fought you. But if you want to arrange my wedding on lavish scale, please go ahead. I am your docile daughter/son. I will be obedience personified. I don’t care to be an American here. They spend their own money in their wedding dinner and functions. But NOW, at my wedding my heart is dying to be an Indian. I want all the bridal / groom’s accessories from you Mom and Dad. My McDonald and hip and happening image can go to hell!

We got admitted in fundu, expensive, private MBA colleges. Please Pappa, come forward to deposit few lakhs as fee. And leave one of the expensive cars at my disposal. With this college campus and car, I will have good time JUST LIKE AN AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENT. What? They work side by side to fund their college education? Oh! I am a cute Indian kid of my Mamma and Pappa. When they are alive, what’s the need to be independent? They will be ready with finances, whenever I need them. With their money I will have fun, just like an American.

What about hard work? Punctuality? Honesty? They put newspapers on pavements. You have to pick up one and insert the coin where it is required. In India, they dare not introduce this scheme. We all know where will be newspapers, and the destination of coins. Those pennies definitely look adorable in my pocket.

This is how I want to represent myself. It’s a matter of convenience for us, Indian yuppies. Whenever the need arises, I switch sides from American to Indian and vice versa. All over the world, people can be Vegetarian or Non- vegetarian. But I am very comfortable, being “Mauka-tarian”. Oh! My Mauka (opportunity) is knocking. I am going to don Indian mantle right now. It would be immensely profitable. The scene is given below:
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I know my mind, I love doing my own things, but if I am in trouble due to my own actions, please Dad, bail me out! I don’t know how to lead an independent life, without your support! Here is your little baby calling out!

Hi Alka,

I cannot vouch for the integrity of these statements, but can get them verified, if u need to.

Here goes:

An Appeal on behalf of the residents of the slums of Delhi

The brief facts are as follows:

· The manufacturers’ associations of two industrial areas in Delhi, the capital of India, had petitioned the High Court of Delhi in 1994 and 2002, for the removal of slum clusters from their areas.

· These slum clusters were, in fact, created to house the labour working in these industrial areas because there was no provision for workers’ housing.

· However, going beyond the ambit of the original petitions, the Court ruled in November 2002 that all those who had settled in slums anywhere in the city after 1990 should be evicted and not given any “free” land for resettlement.

· This ruling did not consider the available evidence that the government had provided only 35% of mandated housing, and that each “resettled” family was paying Rs 7,000 for a license to a tiny plot of land for 5 years.

· Consequently, there was a public uproar after this ruling and the government was forced to approach the Supreme Court, which stayed the above order in March 2003.

· However, in March 2003 the High Court held another hearing in the original matter and, frustrated by the Supreme Court stay, it decided to issue another order directing the authorities to remove all unauthorised constructions along the banks of the river Yamuna that flows through Delhi.

· One of the grounds for the above order was that the Yamuna bed was being encroached upon, but the order was selectively directed against the slums while ignoring the elite (but illegal) structures such as the Akshardham temple, the Metro Rail headquarters, and the Commonwealth Games Village.

· The other ground was that the slums were polluting the river. This, again, ignored the available evidence that the total discharge from all slums in Delhi is only 0.33% of the sewage being released into the river.

· There have been four subsequent appeals against this order in both the High Court as well as the Supreme Court and all have been summarily dismissed by the Courts. In not a single case has the Court acknowledged the right to be heard by the slums dwellers as the most affected party.

· In the meantime, demolitions and ruthless evictions of the slums from the banks of the Yamuna have begun and almost 3,000 families have already been displaced. At least 16,000 more families have been targeted for eviction before the elections.

· Of these families, less than half are eligible for “resettlement”. The rest are cast out on the streets, while voluntary groups have documented that even those who are resettled have been denied the fundamental Rights to Livelihood, Shelter, Education, and Health.

· Appeals to the National Human Rights Commission against forcible eviction have been registered in February 2004 and the Commission has issued notice to the government and the police, but no further action has been taken.

The Election Commission had stayed demolitions in all slums until the elections were over, but it has now selectively permitted them to be removed from the Yamuna banks. The Commission has not responded to appeals to restore the status quo, even though documented evidence of violation of electoral rights has been presented before it.

The hurry to vacate the land along the river is being ascribed to a prestigious project that the Union Minister of Culture has revealed of a national tourism-cum-cultural complex in the area.

Please write, or email to the following authorities demanding that:

# Due process of law should be followed by the courts to give a fair hearing to the affected parties.
# Forcible eviction should be immediately stopped.
# Full resettlement facilities should be made available to all those whose huts have been demolished.
# The government should fulfill its constitutional responsibilities to provide livelihood, shelter, and services to all the people.

President Of India

Rashtrapati Bhawan
New Delhi – 110001
presidentofindia@rb.nic.in

Prime Minister of India
Govt. of India,
South Block
New Delhi – 110001
pmosb@pmo.nic.in

Chief Justice of India

Supreme Court of India
New Delhi – 110001
supremecourt@up.nic.in

National Human Rights Commission

Sardar Patel Bhawan
Sansad Marg
New Delhi –110001
chairnhrc@nic.in

Election Commission of India
Election Commission
Nirvachan Sadan
Ashok Road
New Delhi – 110 001
tskrish@eci.gov.in

Chief Minister of Delhi
GNCTD
Player’s Building
Indraprastha Estate
New Delhi – 110 00
jtscm@hub.nic.in

Take care,

Ajay.
Kuch Khayal

Theirs
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Australia, “FORMER tennis star Nicole Bradtke embodied Melbourne’s Olympic spirit yesterday by watching the Athens torch relay only hours after giving birth………………. Only 18 hours after her second child, Jensen arrived, Nicole left hospital to cheer on her basketballer husband as he carried the torch.”

USA has released its list of torch runners.
I kept searching for the likes of Madonnas, Sharone Stones, Spears in this list but they are conspicuous by their absence. Cruise, Stallone are invited to carry flame but they are not the frontrunners.

China
The youngest torch-bearers
Fourteen-year-old Ye Lu and He Zhouling are the youngest torch-holders this time in Beijing. One of the two girls, Ye Lu, is not only a junior correspondent with Chinese Teenagers News, but also an activist in Beijing’s bidding for hosting the 2008 Olympic Games and environment protection. He Zhouling is a student from a school under the Project Hope program in a mountainous area in Guizhou Province. She, too, was lucky enough as she fulfilled her Olympic dream by leaving her hometown and coming to Beijing for the first time. She has become a heroine-like figure, a glory to her fellow-townspersons.
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OURS

I remember one budding athlete saying, “When we go for 3-4 times road running, bench-press, complete stair running, squat innumerable times, only then we are able to reduce our timings by a tenth of a second. It takes at least one month.” This was the statement of a state level athlete, not of some-one who was a placeholder in National Games.
I thought OUR LIST would include P.T. Usha, Shiny Abharam, Ashwani Nachappa, Marvin Fernandis, Mohammad Shaid, Ashok Kumar, Wilson Cherian, Zeeshan Ali, Prakash Padukone, Geet Sethi, Subhash Agrawal………………

Who were OUR frontrunners? That I will discuss later. I remember one more incident.

I was watching a friendly football match between film stars and cricketers. This game demands some stamina, after all you have to do sprinting many times in a decent sized field. Here, there was no such camera and make-up to conceal your eye bags and dark circles. They might bash-up goons in one shot, which merely takes few minutes to complete, then they cool off their heels in the AC vans till the next shot is ready. The blessing of booze and cigarettes will be sort of different from other blessings. The steroid pumped muscles might be pleasing visuals for starry eyed dumbos and dudes, but in a football field they won’t carry you far.
So, OUR frontrunners were……

The very people, who in the above mentioned friendly football match with cricketers, came out of the field, huffing and puffing, carrying 45 years old lungs in 25 years young body! Our Honorable Sports Minister and President of the Olympic Association are probably ignorant of this fact, called hard work, that even a state level athlete puts into. Or rather they are ashamed of the performance of the hard-working athletes, who inspite of their rotten system, dared to pick-up sports as a career and above all performed and done something for India.

What was our role in all this? We engaged in tussle with security, broken barricades, climbed up the tree to have a glimpse of Ash Rai, Rani, and Bipasa Basu!

We, the people of this generation, really become so dimwitted, that unless and until, things are presented in visuals, rather pleasing visuals, we refuse to rise to occasion? Do everything for us, should be tightly sewn, attractively packaged, applied with strokes of gloss and glitz, only then we sit up and take notice?

• You can’t laugh to your heart’s content.
• You can’t be a disturbing element as often as possible.
• You can’t say, I love you often.
• You can’t shout back.
• You realize the power your little tongue holds.
• It’s so difficult to convey what you want to do next day. Because
you don’t know how to convey “next day” from your hand or eyes
or using your whole body.
• If you pick-up the phone, how furiously you nod at the receiving
end, your effort is down the drain. Stupid instrument!
• You have to LISTEN TO ALL, whatever your Mom is saying, without
interrupting her!
• You are being showered with array of suggestions. You just nod
pathetically.
• You can watch others enjoying piping hot Idli Sambar. All you can
do is swallow your own lump, that too, painfully!
• It’s a small word “tonsillitis”, but its all pervasive. You suffer from
fever, body-ache, headache and running nose. You just want to
curl-up and die. But your near and dear ones don’t let you do that.
It’s the only time they can prove, you are not a mysterious, ET
from some other planet and how well they understand you, inside
out! Your illusion of being a Bermuda Triangle is shattered forever.
• you develop a brand new sign language for a few exclusive people.
• You can’t blog and respond to the comments posted on your own
blog.

For how long shrewdness and manipulative-ness will prevail? It is pervasive. But will it triumph ultimately? I often wonder, is this world belongs to selfish, scheming and “Me first” people?

I was watching about Confucius’ life on History channel. He died as a disillusioned man. He sensed that nobody would listen to his uttering. Like a mirage, he kept on searching for a ruler, who could have understood his principles and acted upon it. He wanted to bury China’s anarchy, darkness and violence. He met one governor, from his own hometown, who listened to him. Both of them worked together and produced some fine results. But ultimately that ruler succumbed to the charm of three most beautiful, calculative and manipulative women of his province. These women were sent by his rivals.

Right proportion of nose, lips, eyes and cheeks or exact portion of flesh at right places or both? THAT IS ALL IT TAKES TO BRING DOWN ANY MIGHTY RULER, SCHOLAR, PAINTER OR FORMIDABLE GENERAL. Alas! This same phenomenon SEEMED true everywhere. Confucius all the wisdom, knowledge and vision could not fight with the charm of three beautiful and promiscuous women! Are these pessimists and conservatives always succeed? He had to leave his province. He wondered for 13 years in search of a ruler who could have at least same foresight that he possessed or willing to implement his ideas. He was not as fortunate as Chanakya. He could not find a Chandragupta Maurya throughout his whole life. Rulers of China chose to live comfortably instead of rising to occasion.

No one was willing to give him a chance. A break, that’s all he was asking for. Never got this wish fulfilled in his entire life. He confined himself to learning and teaching, thinking his disciples will keep his ideas alive. Even there he was a loser. He lost his most beloved and promising student to the cruel claws of death. This made him weep like a hysterical child. He said “Even God has turned against me.” He lost all hope and found solace in the lap of Mother Nature. The very solace of nature, he used to ridicule in his youth. Was he really defeated by reactionary forces? The same demons who travelled to England, to file petition in favor of custom of Sati, opposing Raja Ram Mohan Roy? Raja Ram Mohan Roy had William Bentick. (Thankfully neither Ram Mohan Roy, nor William Bentick had to fight an election. Otherwise they might not have offended popular sentiments of public.) But Confucius never met his William Bentick!

This is grave injustice. How could had he not foreseen his teachings propagated by World’s renowned Universities. He has become an institution in himself in modern world. When I watched the whole episode, I wish fervently, if once, just once, he could visit this earth NOW. He would know that no one remember those three vicious, calculative, manipulative rulers and women. His philosophy is being propagated, not in China but in the whole world; by progressive governments, by many institutions, by evolving organizations, by common people and by sensible individuals. But he was far ahead of his time. And we keep a bowl full of poison ready for such people, be it Meera or Socrates or worse a slow poison for Confucius.
But on hindsight, I think by following Confucius we are not honoring, discovering and recognizing him, but ourselves. He does not have to trouble his holy spirit to see us, the mere followers. May his soul rest in peace. Amen!

This request is from the all the HOMELESS flora and fauna of the notified area of the Panchmarhi forest.
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I can’t speak. I can’t file petitions. I can’t lead protest marches. I can’t argue my case, brilliantly, in front of a Supreme Court Judge. I can not go to prison for a day. I can’t play with words and win prestigious awards.

I am a small rather a very small tree of the notified area of the Panchmarhi forest. Our habitats were snatched away, and sources of food were destroyed. Earlier, we lived in peace following religiously the law of Jungle. No one can escape this law in our area. One wrong step here or there and you are finished. This law of Jungle was broken by at least one world known “environmentalist”. BUT I was ecstatic when I read this.
Bungalow blow to Arundhati – Allotment on notified forest land cancelled in Panchmarhi.

But she did not appear before “another” court and argue this case brilliantly. AGAIN I read in a newspaper
“Neither Arundhati nor her husband — contacted at their Delhi residence — were available for comment.”

This great “environmentalist”, crusader of the tribal and downtrodden, great advocate of the peace, snatched away the legacy of non-vocal species of animals and plants.

Finally I read this – Sydney Peace Prize for Arundhati Roy!