At last I'll see a different color

34 years.... I don't remember when exacly the RED color first draped the walls of Calcutta - I was just 4. At least now we can see a different color. Doesn't matter if it's again a shit. If it's always shit why not try a different shit - horse shit in place of cow dung?

I remember, in our hostel commi was a term used for the most hated person - someone who complains to the warden about ragging, someone who complains about blue films being seen in the hostel, someone who complains everytime someone gets a girl to the hostel, something like that. Though I never liked CPM, still coming from West Bengal, initially the term commi appeared a little derogatory. The extreme hatred that was associated with the term, the violent form of anger that was evoked every time the term was used, made the term one of the most dreadful ones in hostel. Being branded as a commi was like being seen as a terrorist, a rapist, an outlaw.

Eventually, I realized that our seniors were just apt. The Left front government and the CPM folks are actually commis!! It's good that they are finally shown the door. I may dislike Mamata equally (till she starts delivering) but I liked what she said once: There are enough wild animals in the jungles and seas (referring to the tigers and crocodiles in Sundarban areas), we don't need any more (referring to the Leftists). Well, I too feel the same. At least for Bengal, they have been like the worst animals.

My dad is happiest. He started his career in 65, when the left had already started their carnage in Bengal (coming to power within 10 years), and retired in 2004, when left was there in full swing. His entire career, like many others of his generation, was just ruined by something called labour problem, the first gift from the Leftists and something that's beyond the threshold of imagination of anyone outside Bengal. The 34 years of left misrule is the biggest curse that happened in Bengal. The animals can be finally put in cage.

I don't support violence and killing them now. But at the end of the day I didn't feel bad when Osama was killed. If I hear - and that's people are already fearing about - the erstwhile left front heavy weights are getting killed mysteriously, I won't feel bad!! After they all deserve to die like Osama. If the world (at least me) was okay with that I'm okay with this too!!

A bunch of Retards

What's the difference between Dhirubhai Ambani's folks and Manmohan Singh's people? Well, the question is blasphemous because it's like asking to compare between the Prophet and Dawood Ibrahim. I'm not saying that Dhirubhai Ambani was a Prophet of any sort. It doesn't matter whether Dhirubhai Ambani or Jamshedji Tata or G D Birla were any incarnation of prophet or not. But I'm indeed equating Manmohan (I decline to put the venerable Dr. in front of him that I used to do way back in the nineties from within my heart) and his gang to the likes of Dawood. I didn't find any other name to equate them to. I'd like to apologize to Mr. Dawood (well, I don't mind putting the respectful Mr. in front of him now) for comparing people, more dangerous and dreadful than him, with him. Well, coming back to my original question - what's the difference between the Ambanis and the Manmohans. First let's point out the similarities:

• Both are Indians (very silly)
• Both are famous (is it a time for joke?)
• Both control business (well, now we're coming to point - The PM does control more business than the Ambanis)
• Both impact the lives of Indians (well, to some extent yes, had there not been the Ambanis there won't have been so many jobs)
• Both have the responsibility to deliver (are you joking? Yes, Ambanis have to deliver to theie shareholders, to their employees, to their vendors, to their partners - and what has the team of Manmohan to do? I disagree....) I think this is the point of divergence between the two. Well, let's proceed.
• Both have to tweak laws to make things happen (Yes, you make sense. You can't tun a business and be a Mahatma. You have to manipulate things at times. That's what any successful businessman would do. But what are you trying to implicate?)

The last point is the final one which really diverges the comparison between the two. Yes, it's true that the Ambanis flout laws. Dhirubhai Ambani couldn't have made Reliance without flouting laws. His floutings have become case studies for business schools and are now considered as legends in corporate world. That's what Chanakya has also said - you need to manipulate things to make things happen. But then there's a degree of flouting. People like Dawood also run their huge companies, but have you ever heard of anyone calling them legal? No. But the same people would give a clean chit to the Ambanis. The reason is very simple. There's a degree of violation that everyone accepts provided the outcome is positive to the country, to the people. A violation by Reliance will be ignored if thousand more people get jobs and four thousand more people can lead respectable lives. But then there's indeed a limit. And the main difference between Manmohan and Ambani is that the former has crossed the limits of violations beyond the most stretched threshold of tolerance and the later is still within the limits. Manmohan's case is like that of Mr Dawood's - both our outlaws, both have violated beyonds any toleration, both have done no good to the country, both are thugs and thieves and both should be prosecuted without any mercy.

I accept that to run a business you can't always hold the high moral ground of a Mahatma. It's not that I'm basically being unethical from the core of my heart. No. That's not the case. I want to be ethical always. But clinging to ethics may create some irreversible damage that will cause more harm to many other people who are connected to my business. Lies for for a greater cause is approved of in the Mahabharata too - Yudhisthira himself spoke one lie in his life to win the battle. But what Manmohan and his team has done can't be put in the same class as Yudhisthira's lie. That's the difference between violating laws by business men and ripping off our country by the government.

Sometime back I'd told that our ministers are senile. They are not even physically fit to have sex scandals like their counterparts in Europe and America. They are in fact a bunch of retards. They steal, get caught, try to defend like fools and are so senile that they can't even do something to shut the world off. Actually they can't do anything. They are the worst manipulators in the world. Had they been intelligent they would have performed so well that people would have ignored their wrongs - the same way I always give a clean shit to the Tatas and the Ambanis irrespective of whatever wrongs they do in their business because at the end of the day they do deliver!!

Salient Features of Jan Lokpal Bill

Drafted by Justice Santosh Hegde, Prashant Bhushan and Arvind Kejriwal, this Bill has been refined on the basis of feedback received from public on website and after series of public consultations. It has also been vetted by and is supported by Shanti Bhushan, J M Lyngdoh, Kiran Bedi, Anna Hazare etc. It was sent to the PM and all CMs on 1st December.

An institution called LOKPAL at the centre and LOKAYUKTA in each state will be set up

1. Like Supreme Court and Election Commission, they will be completely independent of the governments. No minister or bureaucrat will be able to influence their investigations.
2. Cases against corrupt people will not linger on for years anymore: Investigations in any case will have to be completed in one year. Trial should be completed in next one year so that the corrupt politician, officer or judge is sent to jail within two years.
3. The loss that a corrupt person caused to the government will be recovered at the time of conviction.
4. How will it help a common citizen: If any work of any citizen is not done in prescribed time in any government office, Lokpal will impose financial penalty on guilty officers, which will be given as compensation to the complainant.
5. So, you could approach Lokpal if your ration card or passport or voter card is not being made or if police is not registering your case or any other work is not being done in prescribed time. Lokpal will have to get it done in a month’s time. You could also report any case of corruption to Lokpal like ration being siphoned off, poor quality roads been constructed or panchayat funds being siphoned off. Lokpal will have to complete its investigations in a year, trial will be over in next one year and the guilty will go to jail within two years.
6. But won’t the government appoint corrupt and weak people as Lokpal members? That won’t be possible because its members will be selected by judges, citizens and constitutional authorities and not by politicians, through a completely transparent and participatory process.
7. What if some officer in Lokpal becomes corrupt? The entire functioning of Lokpal/ Lokayukta will be completely transparent. Any complaint against any officer of Lokpal shall be investigated and the officer dismissed within two months.
8. What will happen to existing anti-corruption agencies? CVC, departmental vigilance and anti-corruption branch of CBI will be merged into Lokpal. Lokpal will have complete powers and machinery to independently investigate and prosecute any officer, judge or politician.

7 Scam Maaf

Who ever is the creator of this - thanks!!

Light For Education

Chenraa Collage

“Chenraa Collage” (The Torn Collage)

On Saturday 29^th January and Sunday 30^th January 2011

Direction: Amitava Baksy

Playwright: Paromita Das

Venue: "KH Kala Soudha (KHKS)" Ramanjaneya Temple Compound,

Date/Time: Saturday 29^th January 3:30 PM and 7:00 PM

Sunday 30^th January 3:30 PM

Chenraa collage is set in the regular Indian proscenium style …. A reflection of our very own lives in the 3^rd millennium.

An engrossing tale of love, hate, joy, fun, friendship, uncertainty and anxiety…… A complete spectrum in entertainment.

This is an advanced information and please mark your calendar early to reserve your time now…..

Actual ticket selling and promotion will start from JANUARY in full swing.

Please send invitations ASAP to all your near and dear ones, so that they can reserve their time in advance to watch the play.

Thanks and regards

Amitava

PS: KHKS is a very new Auditorium, ideal for great theatre experience, comfortable individual seating, Air conditioned, Plenty of open space / Garden area around and adequate parking space/ Less than 6 km from MG road. We are also arranging a Bengali snacks corner…..]

"KH Kala Soudha" Ramanjaneya Temple Compound,

Hanumantha Nagar, Bangalore 560050

website: www.khkalasoudha.org

Money Hai to Honey Hai

The fact that I'm a great fan of Govinda has nothing to do with this particular blog that I'm writing. I just plagiarized the title of his movie. Yes, it's true that for a country like India where close to 90% (that's 90 crore) of her population thrives on less than $2/day and close to 45% (45 crore) on less than $1/day, nothing else than money can be sweeter than honey.

Putting it in different words, nearly 180 million households live on an income of less than $10/day and 100 million on less than $5/day. Just for a bitter comparison, even a single Gold Class ticket at PVR is more than what 90% of Indian households don't have at their disposal on any day of the year. Well, 500 bucks is not a small amount when a wholesome vada pao costs less than 10 bucks in Bombay. But there's lot more than just the two meals in a day for an entire family to survive, specially when the head of the family has to pay for the education and healthcare of his/her family from his/her own pocket because our government spends peanuts for both of these necessities. So how do we go about it? Well, there are more intelligent people than me to come up with novel plans to solve these problems. A lesser mortal like me can see the gross things in lives and here is what I see.

It's nothing new that corruption at the highest level is so rampant in India that we've learnt to say chalta hai and ignore. But even the most complacent citizen has waken up from his slumber in the recent past with the spate of news that has snatched even the little spaces alloted to the Spice Girls and Pamela Andersons and Sarkozies. It's long since I've last heard of the latest dimensions of Pammi's breasts because my favorite Times of India doesn't have any space to write about it now-a-days - every micro inch of the paper now is filled with scams. So finally I thought enough is enough, let me find out what all these are about. And here is what I could figure out.

Let me explain it to you too - you may find it interesting in the absence of Pam's boobs!! These are perhaps the biggest scams in India. I've just put them together and presented the numbers in a standardized manner in terms of 2010 USD - this makes the figures comparable. Also I've added the GDP for each of the years of scam so that I get the perspective of how big or small a scam is. Of the top scams of all time two are private - Harsha Mehta's Stock Market scam and Satyam scam. Other than these all the other are done by the ruling governments - three are exclusively done by Congress and another three are group activities where Congress is one of the players. I'd have loved to include the names of other parties but Congress has left no stone unturned - like they have ripped me off my regular Pam-dose in Times of India. Well, along with the scams I've added two government expenditures - on health and education - which I feel are the foundations of India's growth. No doubt our politicians have improved a lot over the year. I really feel sorry for Rajiv and his company - they plundered just a paltry sum which amounts today to $75 million. Silly fellow. His successors have plundered $38 billion in just one of the scams this year. Bollywood is just awesome - they have come up with the jhatkas and matkas of Munni and Sheila when our another set of Mannu and Shiela are rocking somewhere else!!

Anyway, let's see the same figures in the form of a chart - this shows the value of the top scams as percentage of GDP in the year of the scam.

As you can see the enormity of 2G scam is same as the amount that our government has been spending on education - or rather should I rephrase that it's as small as the amount our government spends for educating our countrymen? The value of Telgi and CWG scams could have sponsored government's spending on healthcare for almost two years.

Let me put some more numbers. The 2G scam amounts to $38 billion. Now consider this. There are 180 million (18 crore) households who thrive on less than $10/day. I'm sure that they are not in a position to spend good amount of money for proper healthcare. With the dismal performance of the government health centers most of them have to go to private hospitals. Even it pinches me when I've to go to private hospitals - but I don't mind because I've medical insurance. I'm sure that with a 2K premium per year each of these families can be provided a decent medical insurance that will take care of most of their medical needs. If the government spends 2K per household for a complete term - that's five years - then also the amount (180 million * 2000 * 5 / 46) is less than $38 billion. So this means that if the 2G spectrum was alloted rightfully then the government would have had the money to provide free medical insurance to each of these 180 million households in India for five years.

Now consider this. Even if government spends Rs20L each on constructing a small school and hospital in all the 6.5L villages in India, then the total amount comes to about $56 billion - with $38 billion 70% of the villages could have been covered.

So you yourself can see how much honey our own folks are being deprived of because Munna and Shiela are just mum!!

I know that Dr. Manmohan Singh or Shiela Dikshit may not be directly involved in the 2G and CWG scams. But it's unbelievable that they didn't know a bit when their guys were plundering. No one praises Bhishma Pitamah because he was silent when Draupadi was stripped. No one cares for whether Bhishma supported it from his heart or not. We all know that he kept quiet like an impotent and we don't have the slightest sympathy for him when he lay on the bed of thorns. Here even that bed of thorns is also missing!!

Sources

1. http://trak.in/tags/business/2010/11/25/top-10-corruption-scams-scandals-india/
2. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/switzerland-ready-to-help-india-on-black-money-issue/589649/
3. http://www.iretireearly.com/1-4-trillion-indias-black-money-stashed-in-swiss-banks.html
4. http://www.iretireearly.com/2g-scam-the-biggest-in-indian-history.html

1. http://mospi.nic.in/GDP50_08_R_curr_9.9.09.pdf GDP data
2. http://fx.sauder.ubc.ca/etc/USDpages.pdf - Historical USD conversion rates
3. http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/ - USD inflation rates over the years, used to standardize the scam values with 2010 USD

The world of FB

FB has become an inseparable part of every one's life. Even next door neighbors who never meet otherwise meet in FB, siblings who don't get time to call put up messages on each other's wall. That's really nice. Just yesterday someone, who stayed in our para, locality, in Calcutta, with whom I went to the same school for two years in early eighties and whom I don't think I've met ever since 96, found me out from FB and contacted me. I hear people getting back to old crushes after twenty or twenty five years, find long lost neighbours after thirty years, find out a best friend from kindergarten. No doubt all these won't have been possible had there not been this small piece of application that has revolutionized socialization.

But thinking deeper don't you feel that people have stopped talking to near and dear ones because you see bits and pieces of everyone in their walls. Actually you talk less and scrap more. That regular calls to find out how your brother celebrated the durga puja in that isolated place in US where the nearest Indian store is some fifty miles or how much your sister missed you during the bhai phota are no longer needed. Your brother will post hundred snaps of the durga puja that he attended after driving some eighty miles along with status updates like, 'missing Calcutta', or 'I want to go back home'. That charm in asking him about his yearning to be at home is lost in a public post in the wall - after all a wall is a wall, it divides - has any one heard of a wall that unites? There's a fun in knowing something that the whole world doesn't know. There lies the exclusiveness of a relationship. If my sister feels bad during bhai phota it should be only me who should know about it - why the whole world should know that.

Then there are those old friends or relatives whom you used to call to UK or US or Middle east from time to time to get the latest updates of their kids. But now do you really feel like calling someone when you know even this piece of information that the cake she cut in her younger kid's second birthday was a big two kilo one with nuts and chocolates stuffed into it and that thirty kids from the neighborhood blew off hundred balloons and ate home made cookies? What's there left for me to know. I'll surely miss that call when she would have told me over the phone about how much the thirty kids enjoyed running around in her new house and how much pain she'd taken preparing all the cookies. I'll miss the excitement in her voice - the detailed updates in her walls are no doubt informative but the sentiments are buried somewhere deep under.

Funnier are posts like, 'I've prepared a yummy cake today' by a girl or woman and then updates that three people have liked it and ten people, mainly guys, posting on her wall almost similar things like, 'Wow, so when are we getting a slice of it?' The same girl may then acknowledge all the wows by writing, '@ Sumit, Puneet, Navneet, Vineet, Manjeet, Kamaljeet, Premjit: thanks!' Well, I wonder what was that thanks for - for the wow for her yummy cake that she ate alone at her home or for the fact that there are ten guys who still show interest in her! At any point of time these yummy cakes with three pictures taken from three sides posted on the wall may constitute close to a quarter of the posts you get every day!

In Calcutta we have these ever inquisitive parar boudi, the house wives of the young guys of the locality, who, given a chance, won't mind peeping into every one's house to get the harir khabor - well I can't translate the term harir khabor which literally means the news of the pitcher but actually means the inside information. I somehow have a feeling that these Bong parar boudi syndrome is not a localized affair - in general everyone around the world is interested in others' harir khabor and FB has somehow exploited this human behavior in a very sophisticated way. When I post the picture of a cake I actually want to know what my neighbor or friend is doing his or her kid's birthday!

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be a very hated person in the FB brotherhood for this blog.

Our Politics Their Politics

POLISH POLITICIAN USES SEXY BIKINI SNAPS IN ELECTION CAMPAIGN AD
NEW YORK A Polish woman has decided to leave no stone unturned in grabbing a Warsaw council seat. Sara May, aka Katarzyna Szczolek, has used sexy photos of her in a bikini for the ad that she hopes will earn her a district council seat in her hometown of Warsaw. "I am honest, consistent, ambitious, hardworking and independent," The New York Daily News quoted May as saying on her Polish-language website, www.saramay.pl. "I want to change the world and help people solve problems," she added. ANI

Anti-atom activist offers sex-for-nuke veto

Berlin: A star German television presenter and anti-atom activist has offered to spend the night with President Christian Wulff if he blocks a controversial legislation to extend the life span of Germany's 17 nuclear reactors.
Thirty-two-year-old Charlotte Roche, who has won some of Germany's top journalism awards, said she is prepared to have sex with President Christian Wulff if he blocks the controversial legislation of the centre-right government.

These are the two news that attracted my attention today. It's long since I've written something on my blog - I've been busy with some personal stuff for quite some time and I haven't even got any time to read books. Anyway, coming to the news - the first thing that came to my mind is whether such news would have appeared in India.

Indian politics is flooded with corruptions. At present three of the biggest corruptions of all time, expectedly all in Congress governments - the CWG scam, the 2G spectrum scam and the Bombay Adarsh scam - are hogging the limelight in media and elsewhere. There have been major corruptions always with almost all parties. But strangely there hasn't been a single scandal like that of Bill Clinton's famous Monica-job or Sarkozy-Bruni's backyard sexed relations or Berlusconi's never ending sexcapades. Does that mean the Indian politics with an overdose of Gandhi's celibacy is actually more celibate, or Indian politicians are actually impotent?

Just imagine Barkha Dutt offering to go to bed with Manmohan Singh if he sacks all the corrupt ministers or some hot young girl (that's like an impossible idea in Indian politics) publishing her snaps in bikini as election propaganda. I don't want to debate whether these are right or wrong, but one point that came to my mind is that people who have the guts to go to bed with so many girls or get a blowjob from an office intern, no doubt, have something in them that can move things. Bill Clinton has been one of the best US presidents in the recent past and I don't know much about how good or bad the French and Italian hunks are, but at least I'd prefer them than our senile old Kalmadis. If not anything else, at least I get some spicy news everyday - my premier sleeping with every other girl in Delhi is much better than someone managing to put up a CWG under his noose. When Gandhi talks about celibacy no one questions because he is not corrupt - and he means what he says. But celibacy of Indian politicians? C'mon, as I've told, I'd prefer them having sex - then at least I know that they can do something constructive or something that needs vitality. If someone has sex scandals I know for sure that he has some energy which he/she can spend in something else - but seeing our scandal ridden senile politicians I have doubt if they are even capable of having sex.

Autograph

I've just seen the Bengali movie Autograph. Before I say anything further I should accept that many of the people involved with the making of the movie are very well known to me - they include Srijit, the director, Priyam, the assistant music director, Anupam, lyricist and composer of a few songs and also the singer of perhaps the most popular track from the movie and Saptarshi, who has sung one of the songs. So I may be a little prejudiced while writing the review of the movie. But let me say that even if hadn't known anyone of these people still I would have written the same things that I'm going to write now.

Some information about the movie.

Some info about the songs

Listen to the songs

As Srijit has declared at the beginning, the movie is a fitting tribute to Satyajit Ray and Uttam Kumar, perhaps the two most prominent figures of all times in Bengali movies. The movie is about a director who wants to remake Nayak that Satyajit Ray had made in the sixties with Uttam Kumar in the lead. Nayak was a movie about a very successful movie star, about his stardom, about his past, about his continuous struggle to be in the top and about his constant inner fights that he fights alone. In Autograph an aspiring, confident and also extremely talented young director wants to remake Nayak with Arun Kumar Chatterjee in the lead role. Arun Kumar's role is played by Prasenjit. The name Arun Kumar itself has some significance - it's the real name of Uttam Kumar. A great part of the movie is about the making of the remake of Nayak - people who have seen Nayak will just love the way Srijit has shown the shooting of some of the very important scenes of the remake. As the shooting progresses the relation between Arun Kumar (Prasenjit), the director and his girlfriend Srin (Nandana Sen) moves in an unpredictable but quite logical way - that's the main essence of the movie. The director wants success at any cost and Arun Kumar himself has invested enough in his own movie - all these are very common things which you might have seen many times in many movies. But what makes the movie special is the climax and the ending - like the relations in the movie, the climax is also unpredictable but quite logical.

Nothing happens in the movie that shouldn't have happened. At the end you come out of the hall with only positive things - each turn of event, each nuance in the multi layered relations, each development either in the movie within in the movie or in the movie itself leaves you satisfied at the end - you don't feel excessively bad for anyone, neither do you feel extremely sorry for anyone. Neither you feel dejected nor you feel, ish eta ki holo, shit, why did it happen! I feel the ish eta ki holo feeling is very easy to evoke and most film makers titillate the viewers with it. But to make a movie without evoking any of the titillation, either in sentiments or testosterones, is indeed a great thing.

Go and watch the movie for a really positive feeling and off course some good music!

Riju, all the best to you!! I hope you make many more movies like this.