Suicidal women

I have been following the sad death of airhostess Sucheta Anand, and the aftermath, quite closely. Because I find the story quite perplexing. And frightening.

Assume for a second that a very hurt and depressed Anand killed herself mainly because her casanova boyfriend wasn’t committing to her, and was playing the field. Now, is that reason enough to charge the fellow with abetment? Is being a cad a criminal offence? Is cheating on a girlfriend a crime? And if an already disillusioned lady does something destructive because of that, should the man be held responsible?

There’s no easy answer but cold logic tells me definitely not. Every time a woman dates a man, she carries an inherent risk in the process. The guy may turn out to be super partner, or may turn out to be a traitor, a creep. And when the latter happens, she needs to accept it as bad luck and move on. And if she doesn’t, and does something silly, how can we treat the man as a criminal abettor? And if Arjun Menon, her lover, deliberately drove her into killing herself, he becomes guilty. But conversations that happen inside the confines of four walls, leave no trail of evidence. And in this case, there isn’t even a suicide note. So there’s no law in this nation that can be used against him. Menon will walk a free man, sooner than later.

Bottomline: All ladies must accept that relationships come with a risk tag. And they need to be ready for all outcomes. And no man can be held responsible if a jilted lover can’t handle this risk. In this context, it’s incorrect that Menon is being given such a hard time, it’s against the spirit of natural justice. All I can tell ladies reading this piece is something I wrote years ago when model Nafisa Joseph killed herself in similar circumstances: We men just aren’t worth dying for.

Congress is jacked!

Looks like Sonia’s good luck is fast running out, and the BJP’s is shining again. And it’s not just happening in Karnataka.

I am sticking my neck out and predicting that the Congress will get beaten black and blue in the coming general elections, no matter what sops and promises it chucks at the junta. By heavily increasing the price of gas and fuel, the government has dug its grave nicely.

I know, there was no choice, I know the oil majors were going broke, I know price of crude oil is mounting, I know the BJP would have done ditto in similar circumstances, I know all that. But elections are not won in India because of what you and I think, the upper and upper middle class is irrelevant in the Indian democracy. The people who join long lines to cast their votes are the poor and the lower middle class folks, and they either don’t understand or don’t want to understand gassy terms like Global Oil Crisis and Fiscal Deficit. All they know is ‘Congress ne hamaari vat lagaa di’, and they will do what they can to take revenge and throw the UPA out.

So, by Jhulelal, get ready for the nation’s first Sindhi PM. And am I rejoicing at the thought? Well, yes. Cos the price of gas deffy won’t come down, but that of sai bhaji and pakwan dal might. Jokes apart, nothing will change, of course. The life of the aam aadmi will roll on as usual. But it’s Advani’s turn now to have some fun on the spinning wheel. Cheers to the world’s greatest democracy!

The new desh

To me, the defining image of the new India emerged last night at the IPL’s grand finale in Mumbai.

As Shane Warne, surrounded by his boys, gleefully accepted the trophy, firecrackers went off right behind them. And Warne’s knees began to tremble, he almost had a heart attack during what was his career’s most memorable moment. Clearly, the lurking fear of bomb blasts came to the fore, the Oz hasn’t gotten over the Jaipur blasts, and must have nervously read about the bomb that was diffused only hours back in a New Bombay theater.

And this is the accurate picture of the nation for me: a global outlook, a booming economy, financial muscle power, hard materialism, and yet, complete apathy to the real issues that plague us. That, in our desperation to make money and entertain, we have given a shit for our own dirty backyard.

And the image of the agri mantri, Shri Sharad Pawar, beating his chest on the IPL’s global success, even as yet another farmer killed himself somewhere in a remote village, came a close second to Warne’s in painting a vivid pic of the new India.

The father's burden

Enough has been reported/stated/farted in the media by rookie journos and idiotic cops over the Aarushi murder, so surely you must be bored. However, there’s one thing that still needs to be said.

Assume for a second that it wasn’t the dad that killed his teen daughter (yes, that possibility cannot be ruled out yet), imagine the complete terror the man must be living. First, the brutal killing of his daughter and the trauma that follows thereafter. Then, the intense media scrutiny on his life with some seriously slanderous shooting in the air by the police. Now, he’s in jail facing hard interrogation, and a narco test on its way. And all this based on what? Absolutely nothing, the police have no evidence at all in this murder. And guess what? Even if eventually the case misfires and the man is declared innocent, his life, his career, his everything, is blown forever.

Spare a thought for the man. God forbid, such a calamity can befall any one of us, what with crimes increasing by the day in the big cities.
Clearly, the time has come for the investigative process in such cases to be totally overhauled. We must be doing some very wrong things to destroy a man in such a fashion. I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know this: this is the worst thing to ever happen to any man, and any civil society cannot allow it. Yes, it’s possible the man is guilty, in which case he deserves it. But what if he isn’t? We’ve already hanged him over and over again.

So who’s next?

I think the cricket bookies should expand their operations and do deals on which Indian city will get bombed next. It’s anybody’s guess, so lots of moolah can be made.

So then why am I trivialising such a ghastly matter? Simply because the terror agents are toying with our nation, we can do zilch these days but wait for another attack. It’s a gamble now, you just have to be lucky to survive. Blasts have become like a 20/20 cricket match, they keep getting played out every other day, only the venue changes.

And because they have been happening at such regular periods, most of us have lost interest. It would be interesting to find what TRPs the news channels scored on the night of the blasts, compared to the match in Kolkotta which was on at the time. So yup, it’s following the usual chain of events. Images of blood and gore. Tales of survivors. Damaged lives. Political blame games. Odes to the spirit of Jaipur. Empty rhetoric by netas and intelligence officers. Pseudo communal bonding. Soon, Jaipur will get erased out of our memories (exactly as it happens after the assorted Bombay blasts). See, we are already busy discussing Jayasurya’s pyrotechnics last night.

So till the next blast. I am betting on Mumbai. Any takers?

Ex Expressway?

So now they are planning on policing the Mumbai Pune e-way. And if you dare to hit over 80, they’ll clamp down on you big-time. The only place left where you can really enjoy driving in this country will soon be snatched away from us.

And what has caused the sudden braking? One sleepy driver inside a desperately overloaded machine ran into the rear of another vehicle and caused the death of many. So now because of the misdeeds of one idiot, 99.999% of the rest of us must pay. Does this make sense from any angle? The whole concept of expressways is high speed driving. In many western nations, you get penalised for slowing down, and here we are, as usual, shifting into the reverse gear.

Using this logic, we should police all railway tracks because many fools cross them and lose their lives but that does not happen. We should ban smoking because some people get cancer but that does not happen. We should ban prostitution because some careless sods went in without protection but that does not happen. And yes, we should police every politician because a few are corrupt, and of course that does not happen.

What the authorities NEED to do is to get after illegally overloaded vehicles, but that they won’t do as haftas will get lost. So instead they have decided to reduce speeds of ALL vehicles, thus destroying the concept of an expressway.

Of course people will still die, cos some idiot will go to sleep even when he’s driving his overloaded coffin at 80 kms/hour, so then what will they do? Reduce the speed limit to 50? And then 30?

So let’s hit the e-way soon before it’s renamed the b-way. The bullock cart way.

Pirate BMC

Suddenly, we are reminded of an asinine municipal decree that many of us did not even know existed! In Mumbai, we are expected to shell out nearly 30% in terms of taxes to the BMC on rents collected by us over our leased properties. How corny and unfair is that.

I have two huge, huge issues with this fatwa on real estate in the city. One, having paid humungous amounts on stamp duty, registration and other hurtful taxes, what business is that of the municipality on what we do with our assets? What business do they have eyeing monies we make on our assets, especially given that we already will pay income tax on the rents? Has anyone even bothered to ask what becomes of the stamp duties we pay, how much of that goes into lining the pockets of the corrupt babus and netas? And now, this!

Here’s what will happen if we don’t protest against this totally irrational levy: The landlords will jack up their rents to pass on the burden to the apartment renters, and this is another body blow on the middle class citizens of this city, who stay on rentals cos they can’t afford to buy prop in the first place. Is the BMC trying to drive the middle and lower middle class out of this city?

Two, many discouraged landlords will quit giving out their flats on rent
(don’t forget many building societies already charge higher maintenance on rented premises), thus leaving a whole lot of houses vacant. In short, a lose-lose situation for the aam aadmi.

Sadly, I don’t have access to the mass media to bring this issue to the fore. If you do, dear reader, please use that power to make sure this fatwa is scuttled immediately. Apathy has thus far got us nowhere. Now it will drive us out of this city.