Abdul The Evangelist

Today I had an experience that'll stick with me for a while to come.
Professor Sudhakar keeps telling us in class, and even a politician I once met in Nanded had told me, "के जिस काम मैं तुम्हें आनंद मिलता है, उसी काम को करो। " and today I did something which I enjoyed a great deal, and which has given me a lot more renewed hope about future career options.
We have this project in TY Journalism about the Right To Information (RTI) Act. It's basically a survey about awareness levels amongst students about the RTI, and I've covered a lot of colleges and its very sad that the majority of them have next to no clue about what the RTI is. Many of them haven't even heard of it! Only a few students from town colleges had some idea about the procedure, and that too was a dismal number.
Anyway, so in my quest to find out more about RTI awareness and my follow up awareness sessions I finally ended up in the Anjuman-I-Islam campus. My initial reaction upon entering the building was, "What a dump!" and that reaction became more and more descriptive the more I explored the campus.
I wasn't really kidding myself that I'd find anyone who would tell me about PIOs and CICs and Clauses and Exemptions from the Act, but it was still worth a try, and more importantly I'd be able to spread awareness where it was needed more.
I first spoke to the Principal of Junior College. Imagine my shock at seeing a lady! I mean, seriously, in the predominantly patriarchal Muslim society it was very welcome seeing a lady Principal.
She was eloquent, courteous, and very, very helpful.
JC exams were going on when I went, so I came back after they were done. Unsurprisingly, most of the students were eager to run out of the place and just get away.
I felt a bit let down, but managed to grab a few students and started telling them about the RTI.
Now, this will probably sound obnoxious, but I guess it was the fact that someone was speaking loudly and fluently in English that began drawing crowds. Within minutes, I had a horde of students who were listening if not intently, at least curiously. After I was done (my closing section almost always has to bet the lack of political awareness amongst today's youth :P) a few of them asked me to come to one of their classrooms and address some of the students sitting over there. I was glad to oblige, and walked into a classroom that contained about 10 students, mostly girls, staying back and discussing their paper, as all girls are apt to do (snort!).
Oddly enough, I was feeling very much at ease, and after securing their attention, started telling them about the RTI. A few more people came in, drawn by the scene, but it was far too noisy for me to continue, so I shut the door and continued like a true lecturer, writing down facts and details on the board, addressing their queries, telling them how the RTI could help and empower them, how they could take corrupt corporators, administrators and wild policemen to task. The bonding I felt with my community was so strong it was almost terrifying.
After I was done, I passed around a sheet for them to fill in their names and streams, and was chatting with the girls.
Apparently, most of them wanted to do medicine and be doctors, and when I asked them if their parents would let them work, for the most part I saw a sad shaking of heads. A truly sad part, and my query on whether their education was only to embellish a matrimonial was met with laughter, but I thought it had sad, morbid undertones, a grim joke.
Anyway, walking away from the college I felt on top of the world. The complete whole hearted support I got from almost all the teachers and students, both of whom requested me to come again so I could address a bigger audience, and the sincerity and hope of the students themselves made me feel like I was walking on air.
The whole experience was some kind of preview to the kind of satisfaction I would experience in the line of work that I have chosen, and I eagerly await the beginning of my career as a civil servant.
And yes, the experience did also reaffirm my long-term political ambitions. :D

मुन्ना बजरंगी!!

Today I saw my first bhojpuri movie, and it was an amazing experience that I don't think I'll be forgetting anytime soon.
To answer the first question. Why bhojpuri movies?
The very concept of bhojpuri movies has fascinated me. I mean, seeing something that can be actually more in-your-face than bollywood, with all those hoardings and posters of actors dancing away with fat babes in fields having ridiculous titles such as "Kab Hoga Hamaar Biyaah" ( a common enough conundrum in North India apparently) had an irresistable pull for me. Yet, I never really got around to actually dragging myself to one of those bhaiyya-full theatres till I saw the promos of Munna Bajrangi.
Munna written in green, and Bajrangi written in saffron, with munna apparently a Muslim villain, and Bajrangi the saffron hero. I was entranced, and expected a VHP-RSS-Sangh Parivar financed movie (the amount of advertising and publicity the movie had certainly supported the belief) that showed saffron activists ripping muslim foetuses from stomachs and feasting on them and so on, but the movie turned out to be a big surprise.

Shockingly, Munna Bajrangi is about two friends, a (shia?) Muslim named Munna and a true-blue-Bihari Bajrangi. Munna and Bajrangi join forces to defeat 'Babua', the local crime lord who ravages Bihar's fields and womens with equal ferocity. In the promo both Munna and Bajrangi looked very promising, intense, serious expression that promised good performances and nice action scenes, but when I actually watched the movie, Munna outshadowed Bajrangi by a MILE, I mean, the guy is CHARISMATIC!! From the moment he entered the scene, the audience was howling and rooting for him, cheering "Munna! Munna!" (with me and Raoul joining the voices later on) and shrieking with joy during his action scenes.
I was touched. I mean, really, really, touched. We all think that people have these prejudices and communalism is omnipotent, and that the villages and rural areas are the most sensitive, but if the response this movie got was anything to go by, my perception got a serious kick in the ass.

Another shock was bhojpuri. I always imagined it to be some strange language with every word ending with "va", but if you know even decent Hindi, then you will have absolutely no problem understanding bhojpuri.
I came to the conclusion that I'm as much a sucker for patriotic and sentimental stuff as when I was six years old, sobbing my eyes out watching Poorab aur Paschim.

My Buzz 18 Video is done!!

The Video is DONE!! Watch and Enjoy!!

Jimmyism

This post is rather delayed, but finally my fingers wouldn't stay quiet any longer!! This once in a lifetime experience has to be narrated.

Date: 10th May 2008
Venue: Cinemax Goregaon
Company: Family
Mission: Survive Jimmy

And yes. It was in these very circumstances that I attained Nirvana.
Albeit for a brief two hours.
When the "movie" (calling Jimmy a movie is like calling a gyrocopter a crab's spleen; it's just not 'it') began, and the opening credits showed Jimmy's silhouette rapidly flexing his thighs in all imaginable directions, I immediately realized that what I was witnessing was not an ordinary experience, it was something else, it was something different, it was an experience on a different plane of existence. And as the minutes progressed, my poor five senses, mundane creations as they are, finally succumbed and I felt myself being taken away to a far off place, experiencing a state of transcendence that would make Vishwamitra jealous.

When I finally came to, about two hours later, I knew that this was an experience that could be had only once in a lifetime. My mind was filled with the Truth, that terrible, all conquering thing known as the Truth, and I am here to share it with you.

Concentrate every fibre of your existence on the fundamental question that forms the very basis of Jimmyism and you will know it for your self:

Why Not Jimmy.
क्यों नहीं जिम्मी।
வி நாட் ஜிம்மி.

Mi-Moh Shaanti Shaanti Meee-Mooohhh.

Operation Orissa

Come on guys. Let's admit it. There is nothing called the State of Orissa.
It's a conspiracy. The government of India felt squeamish after Independence and they decided to colour a bit of the Bay of Bengal and call it Orissa so that India would look bigger and more 'in-shape'.
But they can't fool us any longer! Their lies are slowly coming to the fore. They can't fool us anymore about a State that doesn't exist.

Now I know you'll think I've finally gone nuts. But wait! Before you scoff at my seeming delinquency, ask yourselves the following questions:
Have you ever been to Orissa?
Have you ever come back from Orissa?
Have you ever planned to go to Orissa?
Have you ever met anyone from Orissa?
Do you have any idea of what goes on in Orissa?
Ever wonder why it never comes in the news?
Ever wonder why almost everyone connected to Orissa is named 'Patnaik'?
Ever wonder why the government says that all kinds of natural calamities take place there and take hefty donations as foreign aid?
Ever wonder what the hell they speak in Orissa?

If you have answered the majority of these questions with a blank, then you must admit the truth of my theory! It's all a lie!! A conspiracy!! A propaganda!!



(P.S - the above post was written during one of my more bored moments; I was studying the latest NSS reports. But still, think of it. A state that was once home to the great Ashoka of Kalinga has been steadily neglected for years on end by the Central government. Its people are poor, frustrated, angry (and also largely named Patnaik) and the condition of the state has been steadily deteriorating. Today, Orissa is home to the largest number of Naxalites after Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and is a political time bomb. The government better wake up to this sad reality, as to how they are not only excluded from the Budget's sections, but also from the cultural identity of India. We actually hardly know anything about them. My heartfelt sympathies are with the people of Orissa. )

Jahannam

Jannat had all the essential ingredients of a Hasmi flick - a bland storyline full of loopholes, feeble performances, lots of bedroom scenes and a sleazy new nerve grating heroine who failed in her minimal requirement of providing "eye-candy" to the audience.
Yet, these are things that are unsurprising and expected, though what prompted me to write about Jannat was that yet again the Muslim terrorist/gangster/don/villain/bad guy found his way into a Bollywood flick, this time under the guise of the enigmatic "Abu Ibrahim" (a possible amalgam of Dawood Ibrahim and Abu Salem; he had Dawood's glasses and Salem's looks) who is a vastly rich South African "beach magnet" who specializes in match fixing, betting, etc, and of course all of this ill earned wealth has to go into the funding of "terrorists".
All of his Igor-like cronies are muslims, as are the cricketers who are part of the match fixing nexus. One of the cricketers, an apparent sex maniac, keeps saying mashallah whenever supplied with fresh (possibly Serbian) feminine stock.
I was getting increasingly irritated, as the usage of words like salaam waleikum, khuda hafiz, etc in such contexts was really sad to watch. Just a week ago I had watched Iron Man, where once again the bad guys are Afghan Muslim terrorists, whose portrayal is curiously very similar to that of the Russians in Rambo 3.
Sick.

The Left Front

Going through the latest article of Frontline, indeed the recent few months of Frontline beginning with "The March of Neoliberalism" (March 28, 2008) have been very enlightening on the topic of the agrarian crisis that the country is currently facing and the recent I - word (inflation) that everyone seems to be talking about.
To put it in layman terms, ever since the greatly hyped globalisation and liberalisation of the economy in 1991, all the governments, whether they were Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh, or A.B. Vajpayee and Yashwant Sinha, or Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram, all of these governments have faithfully implemented a neoliberalist agenda that has been spelt out by the WTO and indirectly the U.S.
Hmph. So much for sovereignty.
The policies have been largely aiming at driving the domestic agriculture into extinction and ushering in the new era of MNCs and corporates. All very good, but the problems that follow along with them are considerable. Shortly, not only does a large part of our economy fall into a few hands that are immensely powerful and near autonomous- and that too something as vital as agriculture - the majority of these hands are imperialist hands.
And I think you will agree with me when I say that this is something that can never, ever be allowed. Thus, take a close look at how our rural farmers have been either killing themselves off, or being killed due to hunger, or simply moving away from agriculture as a whole. Public assistance has been increasingly denied, and the new policies that are being formulated such as the Essential Commodities Act are wolves in sheeps clothing that allow further exploitation. Naturally, production takes a beating, and in steps the corporate, ready with his deep pockets and "marketing strategies", exuding the assurance of salvation.. or so it seems.

Anyway, so while the Congress has been relentless pursuing its agenda of neoliberalism, and making great changes to India's foreign policy and licking American buttholes clean (whatever happened to the days of Nehruvian Non-Alignment?), cringing and cribbing for the nuclear deal to go through (something I am dead against) and basically taking all they can from the poor aam aadmi, the BJP as usual has stuck by its guns of extreme Right-Wing politics, fighting for the Sangh Parivar ideology of Hindutva, and basically ensuring that the status quo of upper caste hegemony (domination by consent) remains untouched and unchanged, and the Muslims and Christians and other minorities will remain as punching bags for them to use at leisure when in needs of votes. Their policies have still to emerge from the emotional into the rational, and that is something that India cannot have right now; we need action.
Into this political quagmire comes one alliance (its the age of coalition politics after all) that seems to offer a glimmer of hope.
When in my first year of mass media (im about to go into third year now.. God Damn it I feel OLD!) I was quite unaware of terms such as manipulating public opinion, and behavioural control, and still believed in things such as freedom of speech. Exposure, research and insight have bitterly changed my opinions, though my ideals remain thankfully untarnished... I still have hope.
So what I'm getting at is how the media has been utilised by the Powerful Ones (U.S, U.K, the whole gang) to forward their agendas and policies by trying to manipulate public opinion in their favor. Remember when the Left first opposed the Indo-U.S nuclear deal? The next day the Times of India slammed the Left, saying things like "the public has spoken.. we have recieved thousands of mails and sms and whatnot saying that they are sick of "regressive" and "backward" parties like the Left.. we have a power crisis on our hands and the nuclear deal is the only way out.." Things like those.
I was brainwashed, and falling into the spell of the media, thought "oh these goddamn comrades. All they do is jump about and protest for no reason. Why do they are so unhappy about everything?"
However, I realised over the following days that very few papers had given the Left's opinion as to why they were protesting against the U.S nuclear deal. HT, TOI, DNA, and all other papers that were part of media conglomerates vociferously argued in favor of the deal, and their papers were full of either power shortages faced by the country (hint hint) or atrocities committed by the CPI (M) in West Bengal and Nandigram and wherever else. A few papers like Indian Express, Free Press Journal, Asian Age gave voice to both sides of the issue, but they were woefully few. Further study gave me the knowledge that in fact it was the powers that wanted the deal to go through that used the media as a weapon to push public opinion in their favor and against their opponents.
I have been increasingly following the policies and strategems proposed by the Left Front, whether it is regarding agrarian crisis, or inflation, or unemployment or illiteracy or casteism, and cannot help but admiring the pragmatism they display, and how they go about things without any fanfare whatsoever.
The three states currently under Left Rule are West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. With the exception of Tripura, which isn't doing too badly either, West Bengal and Kerala have progressed outstandingly, in economic, social and cultural terms. Bengal has always been a communist hub, but has also produced India's greatest minds and continues to do so owing to its excellent public facilities. Same for Kerala, which has been under Communist rule from 1957 under the leadership of the great E.M.S Namboodiripad and has the distinction of having complete literacy and doing very well on the economic front.
Some of the policies the Left is striving for are very much the need of the hour. The old days of capitalism vs communism are almost gone, and the Left is very much for privatisation and liberalisation, but they are staunchly anti-imperialist and anti neo liberalist, and on that at least I support them completely.
The Left is planning on making a coalition and contesting at the national level seriously, and I hope that they put up a strong case for themselves. They'll have my vote for sure.