Sensitive Indian & Assault on Sense of humour

The sensitive Indian has in the recent times proved to be the greatest threat to the Right to Freedom.As soon as you utter something which sounds remotely funny there is a group of sesitive people who take to the streets.The morons need not know the subject.They need not know the context.They are just sensitive .And since they are sensitive ofcourse they are hurt.And since they are hurt they are as well licensed to hurt and so they are out there on streets hurting everyone literally.
Slowly but surely our over sensitive Indian common man has made sure that whenever you utter a good joke you either end up in a court of law where lawyers will bore you to death or you cause a riot somewhere in some nook and corner of the country.
Everything is off limits.You cant joke about religion ,or caste or a region ,you can ofcourse not utter joke on race .Make sure jokes are not about Dalits or OBC.Only General category Jokes please.And if you think you can joke about your wife like Surendar Sharma better think twice. Humour is the most fatal weapon invented by husband to commit suicide.

It seems Sardars and Biharis are the last joke tolerant people left in the country.Kapil Sibal and company are gunning for you with the latest blasphemy laws which even the deobandis are refusing to own.You cant draw a cartoon of either Didi or Behenji or the Elephant.There is no way out .

The basic fault with Salman Rushdie in Satanic Verses is not blasphemy but humour ,which our sensitive Indian on both sides of debate were never able to figure out.Till date i have never heard a sane guy debate the fact that Satanic Verses was a novel which deals mostly about humour.The biggest joke was when people thought MF Hussains drawings of goddess Saraswati was some kind of Caricature.I pity the modern artists .How is he suppossed to explain that his work is different from what you see as morning paper cartoons. Its like Stepan Hawking trying to explain astronomy to our astrologer selling Nazar Shuraksha Yantra.

Its not that I dont pity the morning paper cartoonist.He is alwasys on the firing line of the sensitive Indian .Unless he is engaged in glorifying the sesitive common man.

I think we should revive the tradition of court jesters in the parliament if all other people are banned from hunour.Apart form increasing the TRP of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha TV he would also ensure better attendance of celibrities.Atleast there wont be walkouts till the jester has finished joking about a few issues.Quite a few of our aging parliamentarians need a good laugh atleast once a day since the rest of day they have to struggle with Hulk like angry Arnab Goswami , Karan Thapar , Rajdeep Sardessai and Barkha ofcource.Even Surendra Sharma had more smiles than these Hulk faced Anchors.

Hope some day we can keep the sensitive Indian in good humour inspite of our sense of our humour.This is the real laughter challenge.

I just read an article in The Hindu Does attire define a woman ?

The article is very well written and brings out very well how women from North East are wrongly evaluated on the basis of their dress. The article is nicely written though very specific to Delhi or metro centric society. Let’s see how different women from different backgrounds dressed as approved by their communities are looked upon in Delhi and NCR and maybe elsewhere.

The writer says "A fully clothed woman is neither the moral custodian nor epitome of society". Indeed they are not. They are the ones who are really considered downmarket among well off people.”Short skirts and sleeveless dress” are maybe prejudiced . But people more conservatively dressed are prejudiced as well.

All women who dress less than what a certain person considers permitted are always accused of encouraging promiscuity. Actually the Slut movements in western countries were fighting the very same prejudice. My opinion is simple .Whatever be the dress however provocative . It gives no one a licence to harass tease or molest a woman .

A wardrobe like a saree or salwar kameez is considered safe in North Indian states . This is again very wrong. Most of the people who suffer daily harassment on streets are just girls next doors and not bikini models.

The author writes that "Short skirts are clothes that women wear to workplaces or even to congregations like Sunday churches" in North East . This is as true of Goa where I have spent last few years of my life. Like North -East ,Goan tradition is quite plural and is quite tolerant about dressing . So while you have Indian dresses mostly prevalent among large section of population, due to Portuguese Influence and more recently due to education and tourist Influence people are very tolerant about short dresses. The problem with other North Indian as well as South Indian people visiting these places is quite simple. They have forced their women to dress conservatively and whenever they see someone with a different style of dressing, less or more they think there is something wrong with their dressing.

Let’s see how all kinds of Attire face prejudice specially in Delhi or NCR which is the subject of The Hindu article .

1. Women Clad In Burqua

Though she is as conservatively dressed as possible no data indicates if they are less victims of harassment than any other women in town. They are automatically considered a no no for any corporate MNC jobs even Local Jobs. Qualifications hardly matter in deciding religious prejudices. The attire does define Women to their prospective employer .She is at the bottom end of a recruiters selection preferences .Indeed the whole concept of Burqa as it was conceived was meant to deprive women from social interaction and to make sure they had no identity . This purpose is well served even in this Information Technology age. At least in our metros

2, The  Girl clad in Saree with Ghunghat

Theses "bechari" women are also considered a no no in all higher society and considered downmarket and mostly poor . They are considered vulnerable and they are the ones who bear the brunt of most sexual molestations and harassment. People think they should remain at home or should be offered lowly Jobs like maids. Such women are mostly considered to have migrated from Rural India .A metro brought up daughter of even these women have changed their dressing style to a more acceptable Salwar Kameez . In places like Gurgaon these women exist with all their Rural force where the more upwardly mobile women are migrants .Its a strange world where the old and new exist together exerting all its force on the other to conform.

3 .Girls in Western Dress

A girl in Jeans or shorts or skirt is generally very acceptable in cosmopolitan society .They have a real problem where such cosmopolitanism has been forced upon Rural areas like Gaziabad and Gurgaon.The men simply consider these " less dressed women" as available and attack as and when possible .Its less to do with testosterone than the fact that these women are challenging their existing Rural prejudices . Money has not changed t

Like a whisper in a thunder

Like a whisper in a thunder

Like eyes split in wonder

Opening his mouth for first breath,

With a shrieking cry to tell the world

I have arrived.

Twinkle of eyes stolen frm stars

Lazy demeanour passed down frm Czars

sinking to the other world

Frm whence he seemed to come

Leaving his dad a li’ll numb

Lying on lap for ever and day.

(16-07-2011)

Tendulkar Accepts Rajya Sabha Nomination

I dont understand why Sachin accepted this Rajya Sabha nomination .He can win any Lok Sabha seat on any given day from any region in India. His chances of winning a Lok Sabha seat is infinitely greater than that of the present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh .The name Sachin Tendulkar holds greater currency in our nation today than the surname Gandhi. Indeed i bet Tendulkar can beat Sonia Gandhi , Rahul Gandhi ,Modi or Anna Hazare and ofcourse Baba Ramdev all at their home turf .

Unless Sachin has just accepted as just another token of respect from just another organisation which he gracefully does every now and then, i think he should not have taken this position . First he as an active player does not have the time required to raise pertinent issues in the Upper House .Secondly if this is an honor conferred upon him in lieu of Bharat Ratna thenhe definitely deserves better. Actually if this is the case then this is a compromise which Sachin does not need to accept..

If 1930s and 40s had Gandhi to look up to ,our generation definitly grew up looking upto Sachin .

Many lesser mortals whose name we dont even know have received have got the Bharat Ratna and Tendulkar should receive it for sure , if not for his records which are many then just for the impact he has had on the morale of what we call generation X ,generation Y ,or then coming generation Z .

The Question of Art and Freedom

Freedom has always been in very scarce quantity on our earth . And the chief enemy of freedom is fear .The fear to grope in the dark makes sure you keep put in your little dungeon .And society as a whole fears more than any individual to grope in the dark. Indeed if you see, freedom is the chief casuality of civilisation . The more civilized the society the more rules and ettiquetes of the way you can eat and the way you can cook and the way you can have sex and with whom you can have it with . Society makes sure that everyone walks the same walk everyone talks the same talk . Indeed every little thing from marriage to school from job to sipping tea in a cafe compromises your freedom to ensure the society that it does not need to grope in the dark . The fear of darkness is all pervasive .
Its always a requirement in art to strip down the subject .Sometimes literally sometimes more than literally . The conspiracy of the society is to coverup. Indeed civilization is constantly in need of coverup to make sure the natural instincts of people do not take over . All kinds of skills and requirents masquendering as ettiquetes are just an iron veil put over the natural instincts of people . And i am talking about the more free parts of the world and not just those still dwelling in medivieal times.
There is no use of debating art in those world where it is rightly called blasphemy and heresy cause Art even in a very limited sense is capable of challenging the existing order . the defenders of status quo of 1500 years and maybe a a thousand more can just turn the debate upside down . Art is nothing but debate and debate in such archaic order is the enemy of the existing  . Art has no wonder received a deathblow in such a world .
Let us understand that it is much more difficult to punish a poet or a novelist or a painter than it is to get hold of a jounalists neck in any dictatorship or religious order . An artist can render multiple explanations to escape the law. And yet an artist will be more popular and more potent than any of regimes opponents . And moreover slowly but surely an artist is more capable of challenging the idiological foundations of any regime than say another hard hitting reasonable opponent is .
And in what is referred to as free world is not free cause it allowed art and debate. The free world is relatively free cause new art was really able to challenge and win against the existing culture . New Art was able to defeat the old art .And as long as new art is able to defeat old art , and as long as new manners are able to attack and defeat old manners and as long as each individuals style , manner and behaviour is accepted as just another artistic way of life instead of being ridiculed , freedom shall survive atleast in a limited sense .