Terrorism and the Spirit of Mumbai

Hey blog,

Day before yesterday at about 715pm, I get a call from my best friend (remember her - the train wali) saying "Aji, I am near Hyatt, can you check and see if any bombs have exploded in my area", I am like - "WHAT??" Shes like "Ya some 2-3 blasts have happened, half the networks are all down, so I cant find out". And I was like thinking to myself, how can someone be so cool about it? :) And thats when I remember thats the Spirit of Mumbai, life goes on...!

Anyways I put the tv on and hear about the 3 blasts that have ripped thru South and Central Mumbai. 2 hours into the whole episode and all the news channels start off about the spirit of Mumbai, and how the people there resurrect like the Ashes of the Phoenix. And then the interviews with the people and the celebrities and everyone sits and blames the Government and demands that the Home Minister, Chief Minister blah blah need to put in their papers and stuff.

Blog - I just have one question for you -

How is the CM, HM, PM, FM, DM, XYZM resigning going to change anything? People who have lost their lives, have lost it. Their families will live with this fact for the rest of their lives. I am not sitting here and justifying that these bureaucrats are right, but actually speaking what can they do? Blady hell if someone comes and puts a cockroach in your house, are you gonna sit and blame the collector of your district!?? (Actually we do, we will sit and say that there is no collection of trash in time, the garbage system is bad etc., but then we have no problems in wiping our noses with a tissue and throwing the tissue on the road, or spitting gum around the place) EOD no minister or politician or policeman can guarantee your safety, so stop demanding for their heads after each incident. Lets take the simple example of Mumbai. She has a population of 20.5 mn, and Brihanmumbai Police has 40,914 employees (as per wiki), that eventually comes to 501 persons/cop. In a family of 4, the parents at times keep saying how tiring it is take care of 2 kids, and you are expecting one cop to take care of 501 people!! I know its a senseless comparison, but somewhere it actually is commonsense. What each of us need to realise is that if there's someone who can take care of you, its just the GOD up there. Yes most police force's around the world have a similar tagline which goes like "To Serve and to Protect" - there's a limit to which anyone can protect you. Its like the saying "GOD helps those, who help themselves". We blaming the cops without doing our part is like what I do before an exam when I pray "GOD I have not really studied anything, but please please please the question paper should only contain what I have studied".

Simple question - Look at the amount of suitcases that pass thru the gates of VT station or the number of people who walk around on Ranganathan Street in T.Nagar or number of people in Chandni Chowk/Brigade Road/Park Street/Tank Bund Road - during peak hours you wouldnt even realise if someone stole your underwear and in the middle of all this someone drops a bag and goes somewhere - which blady intelligence can do anything about it? Simplest of things, how many of us know our neighbours? Maybe yes if there was "Pretty Young Thing" staying next door, we all would be there sharing our Nescafes and waiting with badminton racquets, otherwise we would like, who the F cares!! We dont know who our neighbours are, but we expect the government to keep a count of every single cockroach in the country. The Home Minister makes a statement like "Our intelligence sources couldnt pick up anything" and we sit in our homes and grumble "Same shit - when has our intelligence ever picked up anything".

I have a lot of people on my FB timeline with messages saying, we can spend millions to protect a terrorist, but we cant protect our own citizens. Killing Kasab is not going to change anything. Its another thing that, keeping him alive also wont change anything. Although yes I dont understand why the case cant be closed.

What is the point of this post, I really dont know, coz I got lost somewhere in btwn. I guess my point is simple - stop blaming the government, stop blaming people around you. The earlier we realise that noone but you, can protect yourself, the better it would be for each. Now am I sitting and saying that a society where each one walks around with gun is the solution - No way, coz we dont have the mental maturity for that. I am not a Congress supporter, nor am I an Opposition supporter either. For that matter I dont even have a voters ID. Hence this post is not supporting any politicial or religious establishment.

We Indians have this fascination for our neighbour - we are like so interested in knowing whats happens in their house - precisely the reason for success of reality shows. And our 2nd fascination is in blaming our neighbours, without even knowing what their names are - Again precisely the reason why we blame the government for everything. Simplest thing, there are no rains, and the crops fail and we blame the government. What in the world can the government do if there's no rain!!?? Its not Bollywood, where u can create a rain scene. Lets get realistic about things. The faster we accept reality, the better it is for everyone.

Disclaimer - I know I could possibly invite hatred and adverse comments/reactions with this post. But really give it a thought - dont I make sense? Anywayz in no way do I support these terrorist activities, in fact I solemnly pray for each person who has ever been affected in any form because of these asses who believe that killing someone is how u avenge something. Like the proverb goes, an eye for an eye, makes the whole world go blind. I truly salute the spirit of Mumbai and the country in general on how people get back to their lives soon. Prolly there's no choice, in the rat race out there, if one wants to sit and ponder, they get left behind - so is it actually the spirit of Mumbai or like someone has just put as their status on my BBM list - "Is there a Mumbai spirit, or jus desperate people without choice" - FOOD FOR THOUGHT.

Aye dil hai mushkil jeena yahan  Zara hat ke zara bach ke, yeh hai Bombay meri jaan  Kahin building kahin traame, kahin motor kahin mill  Milta hai yahan sab kuchh, ik milta nahin dil  Zara hat ke zara bach ke, yeh hai Bombay meri jaan 

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

Disclaimer - This is not written by me. Its a pure copy-paste job. I happened to read this somewhere, and felt it needed to be shared - so here it is. A lil on the longer side, but a wonderful piece of literature.

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Written by Adrian Tan, author of The Teenage Textbook (1988), was the guest-of-honour at a recent NTU convocation ceremony. This was his speech to the graduating class of 2008.
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I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.
You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

Chinatown Review - This Vishu, do yourself a favour and watch the movies on TV instead.

Vishu is here and you have 2 movies releasing, one each from both the superstars of Mollywood. Had a day off today, and we had both the movies releasing here in Chennai – Chinatown and Doubles. I was pretty much in a serious confusion as to which one to go for. Went ahead for Chinatown coz it was coming from the stable of Rafi Mecartin who had given the Malayalam industry some good movies like Punjabi House, Thenkasipattanam, Hello etc., But yes I guess records are pretty much like cricket statistics, you might have 20 centuries to your name, but eventually if you are out of form, nothing can save you. And it seems like that’s the story with Rafi Mecartin with their last outing Love in Singapore with Mammooty being a disappointment, and they seem to have missed the bus once again.

20 minutes into the movie, I realize that I have made a big mistake and now with theatres making you cram and park your vehicles, I had no option to even leave the movie midway, so there I was looking forward to spend 150 long mins in the theatre.

Chinatown has been set in Goa (how much ever you try and make Ramoji Film City look like Goa, it jus doesn’t work), the only place in India where gambling is legal. The story talks about two generations, and of three sons of three illustrious fathers meeting after twenty years. Enter Mathukutty (Mohanlal), Zachariah (Jayaram) and Binoy (Dileep) – three long lost friends who are forced to come back together as one of their uncles (Capt. Raju) suddenly popped up from somewhere with loads of money and a casino which he intends to hand it over to our heroes. So how they come together and get caught in a web of some 101 characters who are supposedly forced into the script (read Jagathy Sreekumar and that Hungarian Sumo Wrestler). Ohh and in between all this there is the villain (Pradeep Rawat aka Ghajini), who was the one who destroyed their childhood and separated the three friends. There is a whole Hangover type of situation that was created to bring in some laughs, but for me it ended up being another drag of 15 mins to a very dragging and boring climax. Normally you walk out of a theatre after a bad movie and you still remember 1-2 scenes that are memorable. Unfortunately for me, now such luck for me in this movie. There were some scenes that were absolutely made in bad taste and the ones that stands out for me is the one in the dhyana kendram and the whole nonsense about Dileep’s love failures. Suraj Venjaramoodu is someone I thought would be a saving grace, but here too his role is just to add to the confusion and shout out his dialogues. It’s as if shouting is the new comedy. The three heroines played by Kavya Madhavan, Poonam Bajwa and Dipasha are not even there in the movie for the glamour content, which makes me wonder why couldn’t the director and producer avoid having them and saving some money, but then if I think deep, I would wonder why couldn’t the producer director not make the movie at all and save all the money spent. Looking back at my review, I feel I have gone overboard with the negativity, maybe yes a few people in the theatre do enjoy such movies, unfortunately for me, I don’t fall into that group. Eod it just makes me wonder, do filmmakers really think majority of the audiences don’t have any taste? Come on guys, give us quality cinema like a Pranchiyettan or an Arabikatha and we will embrace you!

As I complete this review, I get a sms from a friend who went for Doubles and he writes “You must be lucky that you went for Chinatown as Doubles was pathetic” oh GOD, little does he know how lucky I was to have seen Chinatown.