Why?

WHY???

Here is a question we don’t ask enough,

O Cmon now we’ve got to be tough.

Yet it lingers a little too much

Haunting me before I sleep, torturing my daydreams.

I see people going about like they don’t care

Are they the enlightened, or are they just fools?

No, I don’t need this word!!

But what if this is the answer, masquerading as a question

Dividing, uniting in one stupid Juxtaposition

Big bro doesn’t like it, even though he says he does

Metaphysics never interested him much,

There are other questions worth asking

Certainly more productive, probably more tasking.

But it lingers

Asserting itself to form pillars

Obsessed with itself to form this elaborate maze,

It’s beautiful, it’s depressing, he calls it a phase

It’s the only tool I’ve had since the beginning,

In my quest to find meaning.

The maze gathers around me though,

Why do have to do this?

Why does it give me bliss?

War & Peace

Masarat Alam Bhat has been in the news quite frequently in the recent past. He has been known for his jail term and even more so for his subsequent release. Ever since his release he has been staging protests against the government. Amongst all that's been said by the media about him there have been silent mentions of AFSPA(Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 ) and no mention of the Jammu and Kashmir Public safety Act 1978.

Just to give you an idea here are two of the most regressive laws in the Indian democracy

1. AFSPA : By this act the Armed forces have the power to -:

• To use deadly force to tackle disturbances in an area without considering the safety of civilian(non violent) people in the area.
• To arrest(without warrants) people who are reasonably suspected of causing disturbances.
• To enter and search a private property, vehicle, without warrants again.
• And here is the best part army officers have legal immunity against whatever they deem necessary to stop these disturbances.

2. Public Safety Act -:

• The government for the purposes of preventing or combating any activity prejudicial to the maintenance of communal or sectarian, or regional harmony effecting or likely to affect public order can stop(read ban) that activity. ( It essentially implies that any newspaper article can be banned citing the above reason. It is to be noted that newspapers and print media has always been a tool to speak out against the ruling power peacefully. Freedom of speech has no relevance if this point is taken into consideration)
• any person attempting to commit, or committing, or instigating, inciting, provoking or otherwise abetting the commission of an offence punishable with death or imprisonment for life or imprisonment for a term extending to seven years or more where the commission of such an offence disturbs, or is likely to disturb public order. (any peaceful meeting or protest against the government is likely to to disturb public order)
• This act also provides for the arresting and jailing of a person without trail for up to two years on mere suspicion that he/she may disrupt law and order in the state.   

This act has been used time and again by the government of Kashmir to stop any opposition to their rule. Even minors have not been spared. The people of Kashmir have lived in oppression for more than 50 years now there is a whole generation of people who have seen nothing but violence. They've been treated like scum their whole life. How do you think children who have seen so much violence and pain will grow up to be? With there being no way to legally vent their anger. They have never felt freedom, they long for it. And when India doesn't give it to them they look for the next best alternative. (Kashmir has also ensured that these people are never educated enough to realize Pakistan as a failing economy will never be able to take the burden of Kashmir but that is a different issue all together. )

Masarat Alam Bhat had been protesting against the Machil fake encounter when he was imprisoned under the PSA without trail of course. He says he has been a stone thrower since childhood. If you think about it there is nothing more or less he could have done to demand the freedom which is his right. Its was only a matter of time people made sense of what he stood for.

In my opinion the release of Alam did open grounds to get into a dialogue with the Kashmiris but the media has always been presenting one side of the picture. The side which the government wants to show us. It was an interesting move to show that the government of India was ready to realize where it had been wrong and try to make them understand why it thought it was so necessary. But with how the country reacted to the whole situation(quite possibly due to the media propaganda) I think the move backfired.

Now that he has been taken into custody again there have been violent protest in kashmir admonishing the government for taking such a stand.(there had been no protests in kashmir when he was released) We should understand the reason why they waved the Pakistani flag. India has failed to provide freedom to it citizens in Kashmir. The freedom which they were promised after 1950.

Further reading

Public Safety Act :

http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/research/jammu-publicsafetyact1978.html

http://indiaopines.com/public-safety-act-is-a-draconian-law-in-jammu-and-kashmir/

Machil Encounter

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Kashmir_unrest

The Knockout Fiasco

28th of january 2015: I came back home from office at around 9pm. I had been out for more than 12 hours. There was one thing to look forward to, the AIB knockout. After following AIB for sometime I had a lot of expectation from what seemed to me a great venture. It was a particularly sad day. Hellish day at the office. I saw the video. Liked it. Went to sleep with a smile on my face.

 I thought it was very big step in evolutionary process of the Indian entertainment industry. After watching all those American roast with American humour here was a desi piece( basically I understood all the jokes). I wondered how powerful internet has become. I mean it's the internet right, nobody can say shit about the content. There is no censor board to take all the good stuff away. Just two days after our  66th republic day, I was beaming with patriotism. Here were some Indian artists willing to take Indian stand up to the next level. It was particularly interesting to see some bollywood bigies not only supporting it but being a part of it. It was such  a happy time.

Everyone I met was talking about it. Some even went on to convince me that it was the only good thing that Karan Johar/Arjun Kapoor/Ranvir Singh had ever been a part of. There were knockout jokes flying about. All the conversations had some reference to the show.

Bling!!

You have one notification- TOI app- FIR lodged against the AIB team........

I showed my friend the same. And we started lambasting the Indian government for being such hypocrites. All kinds of knockout abuses and jokes were made on the government, on the MNS, censor board.

I started to think about why they were offended. I mean the people who should have been offended were present at the show(except Anil Kapoor of course) and they seemed to have a good time. 

I did not see children in the audience. I think Youtube also has a strict 18 above policy. So the children were safe. 

Misguiding the youth. Huh!!

Somehow being tolerant about things by seeing the funny in racism, religion is misleading for the youth. Instead stopping films from bring screened, vandalising theatres, beating up people, issuing threats, being selfish is the way to be.

The video got more than a million views isn’t that proof enough that a number of people liked it. Why should the choices of people who did not like it get a precedence over the choices of people who liked it. That is kind of unfair. We live in free country where ideally nobody dictates us what to watch, who to follow, what to say.

"Freedom to speak one's mind is not only an aspect of individual liberty... but essential to the quest for truth"

If you do not like it don’t watch it. The fact that over a million people watched it without your telling them is proof enough that people want to do things without caring about the your consent. It is a personal choice. Nobody else is affected by me watching the video on my own. I mean Maharashra farmers face a drought situation I don’t see the MNS raising a hue and cry about that.

AIB had to take the video off Youtube. Its only a matter of time someone else puts it up. People will still watch it. The youth is already aware of sex. We make sex jokes. We make horribly fucked up jokes. All of us. We have learned to see the funny side of things. And we have learned to be tolerant of things around us which we don’t quite understand. We have learned all this from such videos, from such artists and people. Let people idolize the real Ranvir Singh not some cleaned version of him that you have created. Don’t sell them lies that you are so fond of. 

If I know something about the real Hindu religion. It never asked anyone to do anything. It left everything to peoples choices. Hence the concept of Karma. Here is an advice Indian culture will survive for a longer time if you don’t make the youth hateful of it. Everytime you pull something like that you make us hate our own uptight culture.

Is it just me or does anybody else see a similarity between this and the Charlie Hebdo situation?