Sexual assault is in the fabric of our society.

Ruchika’s was only 1 case out of thousands that might not even see the light of day, because the victims choose to be silent.

In fact it should not come as a big shock to all the women of India. They are groped, teased and insulted every day and they suffer in silence. When has there been a hue and cry about eve teasing(I hate that phrase. It should be called sexual assault)? Why are we shocked that the pig Rathore was smiling when he came out of the court? Haven’t you had experiences where some loser in a bus felt you up and when you glared angrily at him or yelled he smiled back at you, proud of himself like he was doing some social service? It is afterall a part of our society. When we complain that we felt bad that some loser said something bad to us etc, we are told to shut up and suck it up, because it happens to everyone. And because it happens to everyone, we are not supposed to make a hue and cry about it. After all it is the right of those men, isn’t it?

And how fast do you think eve teasing can lead to molesting? Given a chance an eve teaser will definitely try to take advantage of the woman if there were no witnesses or he felt like the woman will not raise a hue and cry. There are thousands of Ruchikas on our roads, buses, restaurants and malls today. All of them only a step away from being the victims of pigs who have no morals, no ethics and no shame.

When my parents were visiting us earlier this year, they went visiting the city on a weekday all by themselves. They took public transport during peak office hours to get to where they were going. Back home at night my mom tells me how she was surprised that in spite of all the rush and so many people around her, not once was she groped or touched or was stared at in a lewd manner. She was surprised that thousands of men were capable of keeping their hands to themselves in a public place. Does that make us all ashamed of our society? Sure it does. Does that make us want to fight to make our society more humane and more accepting towards women in public? It should! But what can we do? I have no idea!

I feel sorry for all those of ‘good’ Indian men who are sick of being stereotyped into a general category of ‘men’. Because for most Indian women, men in public means men who grope, men who stare, men who pass lewd comments, and men who cannot keep their hands to themselves. In short, everything the ‘good’ men are not, but are considered, by-default, to be so by most women. I am sorry that these pigs are representing you good men.

PS: Please read this post by IHM to know what you can do for Ruchika’s cause.

One of their own.

Please read this article by Shekar Gupta of Indian Express from Dec 2000.

Reading all the reports related to the Ruchika Girhotra case makes me all the more cynical about justice system in our country.

Her whole family was blackmailed and tortured by the cops who were hand in hand with that pig Rathore. How they made life hell for her and her family is proof that people in high places really look after their own, even though their own might be scum of the earth. All these blackmails and troubles her family was having from the police forced her to commit suicide and put an end to the fight. The innocent little girl died and the horrible monster who was responsible for her death has been sentenced to a mere 6 months? Where is the justice in all this?

Rathore had a case registered against him, but he wasn’t expelled from the police force. No. The girl was expelled from her school for being the victim, but he remained a policeman in spite of being a criminal. He was also given promotion after promotion and was a DGP when he retired. All this while, the family of that girl suffered, but Rathore got away because there was another scum of the earth politician also on his side. The one CBI officer who was interested in getting the girl justice was removed from the case thanks to Rathore’s contacts.

This whole story of how Ruchika was denied justice, ended her life and how Rathore steadily progressed up the career ladder and ended up not paying for his sins is too close to RK Narayan’s common man’s misery. The little, insignificant people that we are, we have no right to demand justice, or so it seems the Indian Justice system is telling us, especially if the criminal is one of their own. The worst part of all this is that Rathore was awarded a government police medal for his service. Can you beat that?

There is one big lesson for all of us normal people to learn from this. Don’t go around asking for justice. you have no business to mess with the deserving. If you have been wronged by them, just shut up and go away somewhere to some remote village and don’t tell anyone what happened to you. Just shut up and suck it up. About that guy who hurt you, well, he will get medals and promotions for putting you in your place. Don’t make a fuss. JUST GO AWAY QUIETLY.

All I want this holiday season…

…is to be a domestic diva. I want to be that person who whips up perfect dish after dish with effortless ease. Only, I am terribly impatient and am clumsy and all my dishes taste the SAME . I have searched food blogs and picked out good recipes and tried to replicate them, to results that are less spectacular than they look on the blogs. I don’t want ‘oh, let us go out and eat’ response, I want a ‘yay you cooked today’ response!

WANTED: vegetarian dishes that look and taste like I spent hours in the kitchen, yet are made with ingredients you would find in a regular grocery store, and definitely do not take hours to prep! Will my blog buddies help?

Midweek Masala

• Mumbai Police had their annual event Jashn 2010 where all Bollywood descended to participate. Among them were Aishwarya Rai and Vivek Oberoi (yes he is back to being Vivek) who were assigned adjacent seats. Apparently Vivek looked like he had swallowed a worm when he saw where his seat was, and Aishwarya became restless and started fidgeting. Knight in shining armor for both was Manish Malhotra who promptly took up a seat between the two!
• A lot of celebrities will be spending the New Years’ Eve celebrating with friends and family. Thanks to the recession most big hotels and event managers have cut down on celebrity appearance fees and that seems to have prompted most celebrities to hunker down! At least their friends and family will get to have a good time right? But guess what? A lot of these actresses and actors are running to Dubai now to get more moolah. Ahhh anything for money!
• Amisha Patels’s boyfriend Kanav Puri’s Ferrari was stolen in London. Amisha says he was getting over the grieving and waiting for the new model that comes out September next year!
• News is flooding the airwaves that Katrina is unwell again. Remember how she was unwell a few weeks back and was advised  cancel her Dubai show and how she was cajoled into showing up and saying a few words by the organizers? Well, the lady is sick again, with the same low hemoglobin count problem. Heres wishing her a speedy recovery.
• Have you guys watched Rocket Singh? Well, I haven’t but friends and family did and everyone had good things to say about the movie. So it is sad that we learn now that RS bombed at the box office! Sad.
• To promote his new movie Chance Pe Dance, where he is playing a character who lives in his car, Shahid Kapur will be living in a Maruti 800 for 2 days in January. Living in a car in fine, but Maruti 800? More like living in a teeny tiny box!
• Did you guys watch Paa? The one with all Bachchans except the newest one making an appearance? Well, if Jaya’s morose reading of the cast put you to sleep, get ready for more Bachchan selling. Now there are plans to make a film with the Bachchan parivaar — Amitabh, Jaya, Abhishek and Aishwarya Bachchan together, to be produced by AB Corp Ltd. Get ready for more fake smiles, pouts, hand holding, over acting and mush!
• A lot of hearts skipped a beat and some even fainted when at a recent event Karan Johar announced that Ranbir is single and ready to mingle. Well, when Karan puts it that way, we want to stay away from the man……..what if KJo himself has taken a fancy to the actor?

Sources:

Picture courtesy http://www.eventprophire.com

www.gossipbollywood.com

The Times of India online edition

www.pinkvilla.com

www.rediff.com

Still on Twilight.

We are still reeling under the effect of the snow storm this past weekend. We had record snow of about 20 inches and temperatures are still low, which means the snow won’t melt for quite some time, and roads will be icy and treacherous for driving!

But this post is not about the storm. It is about what I was doing the past week. Well, like I said in my last post, I was busy reading the rest of the Twilight series.

**warning** If you are going to read these books and don’t want your fun to be spoiled, please stop reading this post now. I have cheer-phadofied the books here…….

So I read New Moon and Eclipse in 2 days, and Breaking dawn took 2. While Twilight was fun and had me hooked, New Moon made me cry. When Edward leaves Bella, telling her it is for her own good, and that he won’t be back in her life ever again, there was no stopping my tears. I had to stop and wipe my eyes multiple times to continue reading. But after that I was fine and finished the book without more. New Moon was ok, and ended well, and I was looking forward to reading Eclipse, the next in the series. Well, to say I was let down was an understatement. The author never bothered to develop the personalities of her lead characters. They were all half-baked and shallow. I somehow finished this one and took up the last book, Breaking Dawn. It reminded me of Dil Bole Hadippa review by Quirky Indian. You should read the review first to understand how bad this book was.

I have a few things that I NEED to vent before I go crazy thinking about them. The target audience of this book series is preteen-teen girls, i.e. girls aged 14-21. Now girls in the lower part of this age range are still very impressionable and naive and I am worried as to the message some of the storylines are sending.

• The main female character, Bella has no life. All she does is mope about how bad her life is, and cook for her dad. She has no hobbies, no interests, not even watching TV.
• In Eclipse, one of the characters Jacob, who is in love with Bella, (but she is in love with another character Edward), forces himself on her and kisses her. She punches him in the face, and that causes her fingers to break. She complains about this to her dad, and the dad instead of beating the shit out of that guy, gives him a hi-fi! WTH was that? Isn’t that sending a message that if a guy forces himself on you it is ok?
• Bella is protected by her boyfriend(or vampire-BF) Edward, who is extremely protective and possessive of her. He does not allow her to interact with this Jacob guy, and always chaperones her everywhere. If for a minute we forget that this is a Vampire-human being love story, and assume that Edward is a normal boy of 17, the message sent is that your boyfriend being aggressive, possessive to a point of causing you mental trauma is ok, because all he wants is for you to be safe and he loves you a lot.
• Not once in all the 4 books are the personalities of the lead characters ever analyzed. Bella is always the simple, clumsy girl next door and Edward is always the ‘perfect’ boy. We are not told what kind of personalities these two possess. They fall in love with each other because he is oh-so-perfect and she smells so appealing! Yeah that is a nice message.
• The author spends most of the 4 books talking about how much the lead characters love each other, but for me, apart from book #1, there is no chemistry between them anywhere else. It mostly appears like infatuation to me.
• There are so many WTH moments in Breaking Dawn. For example, when Bella and Edward’s baby is born, Jacob, who loves Bella, ‘imprints’ on the baby(it is sort of like love at first sight for werewolves) and then takes the responsibility of rearing her until she is of an age where he can marry her. So…..there!
• It seems like the ultimate takeaway is that all a girl needs to be happy is to marry her handsome boyfriend and have his babies. Personality can go to hell.

And these books are being compared to Pride and prejudice, and that Bella is the new Lizzy. Well, all I can say is Meyer is no Austen and Bella needs loads of personality to even stand in the same room as Lizzy!

Poetic Fridays

I have been missing for a while now, but I have good reason to be. I was busy reading the rest of the Twilight series and I have a LOT to say. But more(much much more) on that in another post. Today’s poem is by Ogden Nash and is called This is going to hurt just a little bit. It is about the poet’s view on visiting a dentist. Why do I like this poem enough to post it here? Well, for starters, it is well written and clear. I like the fact that the lines are so simple and normal, yet it conveys the fear and disgust of the poet well. (It could well have been the husband narrating the poem, and it would still convey the same feelings, thanks to his thousands of dental appointments).

This was the time in school when my classmates were all getting dental braces and had only horror stories to narrate. I needed one too, thanks to my crooked front tooth, and I held out as much as I could against  it, and was almost going to give up to my mom’s earnest appeals to see a dentist. (somewhere deep down she was worried my worth in the marriage market might dwindle thanks to my not so perfect teeth….hehe). Then when I read this poem the day we got new textbooks, I decided firmly that I was NOT going to let a dentist bore into my teeth EVER AGAIN! I had learnt a nice word – vicious circle, and I used it as an armor and told my dad I don’t want to get into that vicious circle of seeing the dentist to keep my teeth perfect so I won’t have to see a dentist etc, and he bought it! And I have crooked teeth till today and am still contemplating getting an adults’ dental brace(but cosmetic dental work costs a bomb!) For now, enjoy the poem!

This is going to hurt just a little bit

One thing I like less than most things is sitting in a dentist chair with my mouth wide open.

And that I will never have to do it again is a hope that I am against hope hopen.

Because some tortures are physical and some are mental,

But the one that is both is dental.

It is hard to be self-possessed

With your jaw digging into your chest.

So hard to retain your calm

When your fingernails are making serious alterations in your life line or love line or some other important line in your palm;

So hard to give your usual effect of cheery benignity

When you know your position is one of the two or three in life most lacking in dignity.

And your mouth is like a section of road that is being worked on.

And it is all cluttered up with stone crushers and concrete mixers and drills and steam rollers and there isn’t a nerve in your head that you aren’t being irked on.

Oh, some people are unfortunate enough to be strung up by thumbs.

And others have things done to their gums,

And your teeth are supposed to be being polished,

But you have reason to believe they are being demolished.

And the circumstance that adds most to your terror

Is that it’s all done with a mirror,

Because the dentist may be a bear, or as the Romans used to say, only they were referring to a feminine bear when they said it, an ursa,

But all the same how can you be sure when he takes his crowbar in one hand and mirror in the other he won’t get mixed up, the way you do when you try to tie a bow tie with the aid of a mirror, and forget that left is right and vice versa?

And then at last he says That will be all; but it isn’t because he then coats your mouth from cellar to roof

With something that I suspect is generally used to put a shine on a horse’s hoof.

And you totter to your feet and think. Well it’s all over now and afterall it was only this once.

And he says come back in three monce.

And this, O Fate, is I think the most vicious circle that thou ever sentest,

That Man has to go continually to the dentist to keep his teeth in good condition

when the chief reason he wants his teeth in good condition

is so that he won’t have to go to the dentist.

Twilight confession.

This weekend I discovered the joy of reading Twilight! Yes yes laugh away, I am in my late twenties and I enjoy a piece of work meant for young-adults(which I most definitely am NOT). But hey, Twilight is more about deep emotions than adolescent love, the characters, though in their late teens, are mature enough to satisfy the mental needs of an adult reader…..HELL why am I explaining myself?

Well, with my young-adult days far far behind, I confess that I loved reading Twilight for the simplicity of language and for the way the characters are fresh and not stained by the ravages of time. I love the fact that I can read these books which are meant to be read with your head switched off and heart firmly in place. Don’t believe me? Go grab the book. Meanwhile, let me go get New Moon!

If you have read it, do let me know what you think about it, also how does the movie compare to the book?

Stupid stupid politicians

This post was going to be a very objective analysis but degenerated into a rant.

I was going to post about Telangana-related law and order problems in Hyderabad and how the students ofOsmania University are being taken advantage of by nasty, selfish politicians, but I wanted to wait to see what happens. And what happened? Madam agreed to the creation of a separate Telangana. Who is she, I ask? Who is she to dictate whether a state will be divvied up into 2 separate states, with the current capital city being left in the limbo about its future?

I think this is a bad move. Many MLAs and MPs resigned yesterday after this news broke, a lot of then belonging to the Congress. The fact that only a handful of local politicians actually are for this move speaks volumes about it. KCR is a drama queen. He started his ‘fast unto death’ but was caught chugging a glass of juice a few days after he started. We need a Vallabh Bhai Patel to handle idiotic politicians like him who want separation. Right now no one knows how the separation will take place. Most pro-Telangana leaders want Hyderabad to be the capital of Telangana, and a lot of the others want Hyderabad to be made a union territory. What do we(common man) think?

I don’t want to be called a Telanganaite the next time I go to India. Suddenly associating myself with a new state is not something I am looking forward to. But who is listening to me?

Most of Telangana region, with the exception of Hyderabad, is dry and poorly developed(remember the farmer suicides?). This is one of the reasons the TRS wanted a separate Telangana, because they think a separate state will garner more development funds. While it may be true in an ideal world, there are no guarantees to what level politicians can stoop. For all you know Telangana could remain the poor region that it is.

Also, what if Hyderabad is not a part of Telangana? Right now leaders from the Andhra region are in favor of making Hyderabad a Union Territory, and that will take away one developed, cosmopolitan region out of Telangana.

What about hundreds of thousands of people who have migrated from the Telangana region to the Andhra region and vice versa for better jobs/family etc? Will they be forced to move back? If not, then will the locals take up the cause and drive them out a la MNS in Maharashtra? Separation is only going to create xenophobia in people. Say hi to riots.

Are we going back in time to hundreds of Princely states? While I get the idea that smaller states are easier to manage, the real reason for separation of regions into states is very linguistic/cultural, which is not good.

After a mere 53 years of existence, Andhra Pradesh will cease to be a unified entity and be separated into Telanganaand Andhra, like it was before 1956. Seems like either the Andhra Pradesh experiment failed or our leaders failed to live up to it. I am most disappointed in the Congress. There is no other party I would vote for, but this one has let me down big time. WTH is wrong with Manmohan Singh? Why is the madam ruling the country like a dictator? Are we not a democracy? So what if KCR was on hunger strike? Whatever happened to diplomacy, to negotiating? Is this another ploy to garner votes? What if Gorkhaland wants a separate state(they have already started the fast unto death there)? What if Buldelkhand wants to separate? What if Rayalseema, Vidarbha want separation? What if?

Finally I want to really plead to political leaders to kindly leave students alone. Every small problem in AP/Hyderabad is a reason for idiotic politicians to fire up students of Osmania University and take that place over. THAT IS NOT FAIR. I spent 4 beautiful years of my life in OU and there is no other place like it. But every time there was some politicaltamasha(Valentine’s day, Dec 6th etc come to mind) in Hyderabad, the students were rounded up and asked to disrupt normal life in the city. That was when the place transformed from this beautiful place of education and fun into this monster that needs to be killed. I hated that. We all hated that.

PS: The next time we go to Tirupati we would be traveling across state lines? Shit.

Midweek Masala

• As more details about the sequel to Mr. India emerge, fans of the original will be happy to note that Anil Kapoor will continue being Mr. India whereas Salman will play Mogambo. This blogger is certainly khush that Salman isn’t Mr. India!

• According to sources, Amrita was required to do a kissing scene with Emraan Hashmi in Mohit Suri’s upcoming film which is based on the racial attacks in Australia.The actress turned down the offer saying she wasn’t comfortable with the scene, and has now been replaced by Neha Sharma. What I fail to understand is why someone would want to kiss the guy? (Have you seen him?)

• Here is some proof of recession(and bad performances) hitting B-town.  Eros International, the financiers of Agent Vinod starring Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor, has considerably slashed the film’s budget. Looks like they took the performances in Kurbaan to heart. Here’s hoping that Eros will save us from another dud!

• At a recent event in Dubai, Salman and Katrina were signed up to perform, but when Katrina fell ill and was advised by her doctor to not do anything strenuous things seemed to go downhill. Eventually Katrina agreed to go on stage and wave at her fans and say “Hi-Hello-I Love You Dubai“. What we don’t know is how much moolah she was paid to do that? Whatever happened to that enormous debt Dubai was supposed to be under..eh?

• Did you guys watch Phoonk? No? That was maybe because the movie sank without a trace after the first few days. Well, not to be undone by fickle public, Ram Gopal Verma, who made Phoonk is now planning a sequel called (what else) Phoonk-2. But that is not the news. The news is that he is making the sequel in 3 languages simultaneously – Hindi, Tamil and Telugu. Well, I appreciate his efforts, but the proof of the pudding will be in eating….no?

• So heres B-town indulging in ‘You scratch my back I scratch yours’. Priety Zinta was heard telling the media that upcoming Kajol-SRK starrer My Name is Khan is a great movie and that Kajol’s performance in the movie is ‘outstanding’. Well, may we recycle the ‘pudding’ proverb here?

• Now here is a smart woman. Kangana Ranaut was dispensing some pearls of wisdom on women and marriage. She said single women shouldn’t marry, unless they earn enough to sustain a family. Wise words.

Sources:

gossipbollywood.com

timesofindia.com

pinkvilla.com

White weekend and interview

Did you all have a nice weekend? Mine looked like this:

So we stayed put indoors with warm food and watched movies. Today we had to brave the cold weather and slippery roads to get to work. Sigh!

On a different note, I was interviewed by speakbindaas.com. Please hop over here to read it.