I would like to say here that any man who beats up another woman, has no morals. And someone with no morals has no right to go around preaching morals.

Further this whole incident has raged a debate, fueled by the Media, especially the News channels. a debate that talks about our changing values and new word was coined as well the “pub culture”. Various Politicians, Chief Ministers voiced their option against the manner of the attack, but they followed those options with stronger ones against the “pub culture”, because they didn’t want to be seen promoting something that was widely believed as immoral amongst the “general voting public”.

By Voting Public, I mean the demography that votes, which includes uneducated people, rural people, worried parents, all of whom have never seen a pub and their notion of such places are based on what they have seen in movies or what they have heard. Roughly put, they think of Clubs and Pubs as places where girls and boys, go down a dozen drink, then top it up with drugs and at the end go have sex. Though there isn’t anything more further away from the truth, It would be difficult change this mindset of the “general voting public” and I’m not talking about changing this mindset.

Though not directly, the “general voting public” would align themselves with the so called “guardian of our culture” rather than support the victims of this incident, because they victims are perceived as immoral for visiting such a place, before anything.

I have seen how elections are fought, and can tell you one thing, issues is all that makes or breaks these election campaigns. And this attack in an Election year prompts me to look a little deeper at the political motivation that this incident may have, and how Saffron Parties can take advantage of this. The fact that the incident took place in a Saffron State also points to the fact that the perpetrators tried to get maximum mileage with least damage.

We need to hand pick these goones find out what was their motive (not the one moral bullshit), the actual motive and I can be sure it would be money. Educated employed young people don’t get into such messes, because they need to report to work the day, but everybody needs money and even these guys have received sums of money from their bosses. Some one needs to ask them what are their sources of income and where they all that money to pay for their bails and legal fees. Two things would come to light with this, first we would know who are their bosses and definitely it would Politicians who would stand to gain in the coming elections from such retoric and secondly and most importantly that this is not about culture, morals or religion but about money for the foot soldiers and politics for their Leaders.

finally, I would like to also give my views on the comment from a member of the National Women’s Commission, first your job is to protect women’s right and not to check the security situation of a place, if thats the case someone might rob someone elses house and claim innocence on the basis of that the house didn’t have adequate security. Secondly she mentioned something about the girls at the pub wearing “nude clothes”, excuse me, you are either clothed or your nude, and there isn’t anything like nude clothes, the videos of the act have been played and replayed over a thousand times on various news channels everyone can see what the girls were wearing, there wasn’t anthing “nude” or even indecent about the clothes further it was the so called moral brigade that was trying to rip the clothes of women (or probably they went in there to see nude clothed women didn’t find any and decided they wanted some and…)

Please don’t forget to comment with your feedback if you agree or don’t agree, I would surely publish it and respond.

Today, was a really cold morning and I went to reach my sister, Elvira to the near by rickshaw stand or at least to the main road on my scooter, from where she and my mom (who walks the 5-10 distance) can get a rick, to go to college. Elvira is handicapped and even walking the 5 – 10 mins distance is painfully tiresome for her, therefore I have to take her on my scooter.

To our luck (good or bad), we found a rick, before getting on to the main road where the rickshaw stand is. At first the driver gave me a querying look, to find out where we would like to go, but when i told it was just till S.V road, he just refused. And, when I informed him, his meter was flagged for hire and he can’t refuse, he told me he had a fixed fare for saki naka.

I got into an argument and, even made my mom and sister to board the rick. But seeing that driver wouldn’t budge and I was just on the verge of rasing my hands, my mom decided to board another rick that came around.

I just couldn’t let that go, and decided I should wait by that rick and if I could inform his “fixed fare to saki naka” what an ass that rickshaw driver was, probably that person MAY decide to take another rick.

The fare came around, and I told her, ma’am this guy has refused a fare of a lady with a handicapped child and I think you shouldn’t, for this reason, board this rick, but another. But that girl, who as she claimed, late for work, feared that the other rickshaw drivers may doze off on the highway.

We often choose convinence over standing up for whats our right. and mind you we do pay a price for it, in this case. The rickshaw driver has strengthened his belief that he has the right to refuse, which only spells longer waits for a rick that would go your way and this happens more with women and children.

We can always take another rick, but if we all insist on our right, after all we are paying a fare and not demanding a free ride; Slowly but steadly we can teach this group, to follow the law. But we often find it more convienient to be fence sitters or hail another rick.

This attitude of rickshaw driver, especially the young ones of choosing a fare based on their whims, is a sign of bad things to come, who knows next it would be the scrapping of the meter system, similar to places like Mira Road, where they charge a fixed rate, starting from Rs. 20, which is more than twice of what the actual fare would have been.

It takes a little time and can get ugly at times, but if everybody stopped and insisted that enough is enough and auto rick shaw drivers even with their fancy unions and political nexus would have to cave in because they are on the wrong side of the law. And probably someday, they would know that if they wanted to be treated like public transport and go on strikes for increasing fares or even stop new bus services or private transport companies that compete with them, they would have to be more responsible.

Everybody had something to say.. about the attack. Someone said it was inhuman. while others said they are sad about this, some others said mumbai will bounce back and the best was this one where somebody pleaded for somebody, anybody to stand up and bring change.

What’s the point of all this. We are quick to condemn such incidents, complain about the security situation, the cop whose just looking for the next bakra to pay him a bribe, the size of that cops belly… who knows if he could run to save his own life, let alone the lives of ordinary citizens… and we do this with all we have and with so much gusto, but only among our peers… not where it would matter or make a difference.

Like in the last comment I highlighted above, the commenter wanted somebody, anybody to bring the change and not herself.

We need to show worthiness to deserve the change we so desperately want. Question what your getting if not you’ll continue to get the same i.e. bad roads, bad cops, bad everything.

Q:Who is to blame?
A: The Politicians

and Q: why I may ask?
A: just because they are elected representatives…

and Q: who elected them?
not us… because we don’t vote.

How can you expect something from a leader that you didn’t help get elected. and if we have helped get him elected then its even worse, because we haven’t clearly set expectation.

I take responsibility, because I voted but never stood up and questioned those whom I voted for… why this and why not that!!

Never Questioned Mr. Govinda, “where are you?, why aren’t your attending parliament, the same parliament for which I chose you to represent me.”

Never did I question the system of drawing lots for deciding reservations for Women and ST/SC/OBC in the Municipal Corporation, because of which we often see candidates being imported from other areas as there aren’t (or local party strongmen chose to ignore) candidates that fit the profile, what follows is term with virtually no corporator to serve the ward.

For this and many more that I would term my inaction or my failure to be a contributing citizen of this democracy of ours, I take responsibility for the wrongs that have happened including this attack, because at the end of the day it all happened and reached such a stage because of the inadequacy of our City, State and Nation… which was the responsibility of our leaders, whom I either didn’t help getting elected or even if I did, I didn’t look at / question what they did or didn’t do for My City, My State and My Country.

Learn to Question! because you deserve better. Start small and then grow… its something like planting a tree… every small bit would count.

For example, You know how Auto rickshaw guys could be hard to come by and many would just refuse to go where you want to. I decided enough was enough as I wasn’t asking for charity or a free ride, I was paying for it, So a few months back i started this thing where if the rick showed “for hire”, I’m boarding it, regardless of the guys saying yes or no. It hasn’t always gone smoothly, often it takes up time arguing with the guy and after several delays to where I was heading, two really ugly verbal spats and one fist fight… I continue because I know someday people will look and learn and if many start this, it won’t be long before rickshaw guys learn that they are public transport and don’t have the right to refuse.

Similarly we can question the guys who want your precious votes, what they gonna give us in return and what if they don’t deliver… would they like a punch on the face or a kick up the ass. And if you haven’t got a precious vote, please head to Jagoore dot com… haven’t you watched the ads on TV (shame on you if you’ve seen it and continued to ignore it.)

If you have something to say, please do so below.

P.S. Indian News channels especially those shady hindi ones and Headlines today… Don’t run it on your ticker that “One of the Mumbai attackers claims responsibility” this is just a way of expressing myself and my anger at all things leading to this and many other things. I have nothing and will continue to have nothing to do with those MF who have no respect for the life of individuals like themselves… and attack civilians who aren’t armed or trained like them.

Note to terrorists: :) if you think so much of yourself that you can take on our democracy, then just a give us level playing feild come down to any of our mumbai railway stations unarmed and I can promise you that we will take you down with our bare hands… no cops… no secuity agency would be involved, ask any pickpocketer who has ever been caught in the act in our local trains (if theres one who has survived what follows).

The post received considerable response some encouraging, some amazed and one that took the bull by the tail. Though Saurav tried his best to respond politely without giving in, the dude kept on with his rhetoric.

At first I felt that I should give this guy a peice of my mind, but when I discussed this with Saurav, I felt it waas best that saurav took care of this himself… But I had an opinion which needed to be told and hence I commented once I saw that the dust had settled. This guy comes back and replies to my comment.

Surely I couldn’t keep myself from replying, but half way through my reply which was already a page & half, and full of things that may not go down well with a few, I thought if this debate needs to carry on, it should do here, on my space not Saurav’s because a.) he doesn’t quite digg such confrontations and b.) he is fun guy whose better of discussing his bullshit.

And hence this post to set stage for the below text that is my comment.

Hi wassup…

I have resisted responding to you since long as I didn’t wanna upset my fun loving friend, who very well knows what a vociferous individual I am, with my own opinions; for a simple reason that he had attempted to tell us, his friends that see here is great community with a rich culture (not that other communities have a less rich culture) and only because of some misguided souls the entire community is being cornered to the wall with an eyes of suspicion. It’s like saying because there are a few bad apples, apples needs to be wiped from the face the earth, at that point he made a passing reference to certain other groups which we could rightly categorize as equally bad apple; then you come here and tell us otherwise clearly trying to get into fist fight of words or just an attempt to show off your “superior knowledge” on the subject… being faced with smart but subtle replies you resorted to cheap moves like referring your past experiences, which only you know best yourself is true or not (Come on do you expect us to believe some of that stuff like the guy who said “I wish I was in Pakistan” OR even your scholarship, dude refer me to those guys, they should sponsor my education, considering I’m a catholic… Oh I really liked the part where you landed for mass and even went to the Gurudwara. All Religious places have an out of the world thing and therefore you not only have to be physically present there but also spiritually to claim to be there.)

Let me address the points you have raised
“Hindu Rashtra – what is wrong?” — Everything about it is wrong my friends. It takes more than Gods blessings to run a nation, a sound understanding of foreign affair and economics to name a two. Its takes more preparation for things like the recent signing of the N Deal then consulting the stars, or sprinkling holy water or even reciting verses of the Quran. (No offense is meant to any religion, only trying to make a point that religious beliefs are best ones private affair or at most amongst other fellow believers, if brought out amongst other citizens it will only create confusion, leading to hatred and even violence, that until we learn lessons of tolerance.)

“I’d like to remind the enlightened Alex that ‘Word of God’ has been long listed in the Vedas (6000 years before Jesus was even recorded in history). Incidentally, it helps that the Vedas are perceived to be casteist.” — please note that Christianity according to our scriptures never began with Jesus Christ, it was there since dawn of man kind the building of earth in six days, and Adam being created, followed by Eve. My friend there is no point arguing who came first and what is true religion because none of us has a time machine to go back and verify for ourselves. Further it can always be argued that the Theory Evolution states otherwise to what the old testament says abt the world being created in six days or even any other scriptures state about how the world came into being and further this can be counter argued that time is a relative thing what may have seemed like six days to God, may be millions of years of evolution. The point that I make is, religious debate at our level is futile, where we will be just moving around in circles; Losing the essence of our religions and beliefs which we have held on to inspite of some much exposure to science which has told us otherwise on every step, all because we need a higher power that we can fall on in times of crisis (remember the saying that goes something like where science stops, prayers starts it’s work).

“How much of history have you read apart from that listed in our warped textbooks? History has been moulded brilliantly to reflect modern day political compulsions. Hats off to the genius that accomplished. My sorrow for the people that bought it.” — Thank you for acknowledging the fact that I’m a genius. The only education I am proud of is the lesson which taught me to question, taught me that what was being taught was someone subject views, and I have a right to differ as long as I have seen all available aspects of the topic.

“As for the casteist system – blame the interpreters of the system and not the system. It’s like saying India is stupid; whereas Indians allowed themselves to be exploited.” — I was referencing to an ancient time caste system which had the Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Vaishas and Shudras… I understand that till here everything was fine and it was just about setting a social order for smooth functioning; but the problem came when few selfish men started their own belief of caste is something you need to be born in (I believe hymns from the Rig Veda suggest that caste is not decided by birth)… Then there were individuals who went past this belief and has inter caste marriages, they began to be called chandalas, I believe they formed most of the dalit community being ousted for disobeying this hierarchy that didn’t give them breathing space. Now in Free India, they had a right to choose and they choose religions that didn’t discriminate like Buddhism and Christianity; Mind you this was the very learned Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkars idea and a great one that I salute. My point was just to remind you great people like Dr. Ambedkar could never have been enticed by your alledged means of conversion, they have a mind and are very capable of Making an informed decision. I know this family which lives in a hut next to my chawl, they have received a lot of help from our church, which has lead the man of this house hold the quit drinking, and start up a business of selling peanuts in the market, his daughter goes to a decent school now (not the municipal school) they even received ration when this guy was ill; and he didn’t have to convert and hasn’t converted. Why go that far to my neighbours, my family is an example, my grandfathers and great grandfathers never received any monetory gains from accepting Christianity in place of Hinduism, that they were born in. Look what I have done, gone into a debate on the caste system and religion which are like a black hole, a call to go around in circles, I feel sorry for mentioning it especially when my initial point was to let you know there are more reasons for conversion, than just cheap enticement. Further just for argument sake I allege that groups like the bajrang dal are the one doing the forcefully conversion (reconversion) or what they call shudi; after all they are the ones with the weapons.

“Aryans did not impose the caste system on the Dravidas. It well existed before the Aryans.” — Dude seriously, where did you, get this from. It has always been the Aryans who have tried to preach supremacy of theirs over others, take the e.g. of Hitler. And now don’t tell me Hitler is out of context, Aryans have come from the north (Europe). But Arguing about these without us being history scholars is quite childish.

“India minus Gandhi and Nehru would have long been a country with striking force and capability… if it weren’t for Gandhi or Nehru, India would very much be a developed nation and not a developing nation.” — Though I am not one that full agrees with what Gandhi has done… I still feel that if Gandhi would have pushed for Vallabbhai Patel to be PM instead of Mr. Nehru… things could have been different. But that said I don’t believe that a single mistake is bigger than all the right that one has done through out his life. There are a few things that we may not like these leaders but we have no right to belittle them and irresponsibly say that things would have been better… who is to say that neither I nor you have lived in those times or faced the compulsions that they came across. They made some decisions that didn’t go down well, but should we forget the ones that did. If you want know how developed we would be hadn’t it been for them, just make a list of things they have done and just imagine India without them. To give you a Head Start, 1. Satyagraha preached by Gandhi, how much also u would like to deny, has been India’s advertisement for what kinda Peace loving people they are. 2. The Mixed Economy System, this one you may not know, during the cold war Russia and US were trying to get newly formed nations like ours to follow their styles of economies Communist and Capitalist respectively. But India along with a few others decided to take a new approach with the best of both worlds where you had insulation for the poorest of the poor and also space for free enterprise to flourish.

To sum up… We don’t agree on most things other than the part where you accept I’m a genius, and to prove ourselves we can argue and counter argue leading to nothing other than a bad taste in our mouth, hence I declare that we agree to disagree and end this debate here… if for some reason you feel otherwise and wanna cry about it, I would appreciate you do that here at my space, because I know that Bombi, won’t quite appreciate it cause that’s just beating his purpose for the Blog Post as explained in the start of this comment…

I know I know really long.

Today I logged into my email to only find out that my Myspace a/c was deleted, what was even shocking was that they deleted my a/c because I had sent them a message on their site regarding a phishing email I received that said that my myspace.com A/c was going to be deleted, if I didn’t download a software and install it on my PC.

I forwarded the details to Myspace.com thinking they would be interested in knowing about people who are miss using their name, and take action to stop such acts; also which was more of a concern for me was that these guys had my email which I used for myspace and knew I wasn’t logged into to the site for more than a couple of months at least.

Few days since that initial contact with Myspace I received a email asking me for the Id in question, I sent them my ID. I now received an email telling that the issue was resolved and the id deleted, but the ID deleted was my own…

But anyways I wasn’t quite found of the site… for various reasons:

• Some guy called Tom adds you as a friend
• Strange women in sluttery attire want to be your friends… Its only ones guess whether these are actual people.
• Some of the site takes forever to load
• It has really bad design.
• And last but not the least they delete your ID if you call foul.

Anyways I love facebook.. and many of my friend love orkut… So I’m happy being on facebook and orkut.

Tired of incorrect bills and dealing with the numbskull customer service advisors. I decided enough was enough and if i need to put in so much time to deal with hutch then they need to compensate me effectively… Each time they made a mistake and each time they delayed resolving it.

In this very endeavor when i had an issue with my bill for june, which took most of july to be sorted out.

I asked this guy called clifford d’cruz a senior manager from the company to give me my internet pack free for a month it costs Rs. 499 for 500 meg.

But the bug loaded hutch billing system issued me a bill with incorrect charges to a sum of 2.5k for the extra 500 meg. and getting that sorted took a lot… Finally i emailed the highest authority whom i could find an email for on their website.

Never seen a indian company respond so fast to an email, just 2hrs (godaddy.com replied in 20mins, but 2hrs can pass as an indian record one for the limca book.)

the guy sorted things out right away, but i had some tickle in my behind and i told the guy what about compensation. and he unhesitantly offered the 499 internet pack free for 2 months.

but has i said free is never hassle free.

I’ve recieved a bill which has rental charges for the 199 internet pack which i never had.

i’ve spent over 10hrs of call time, tryin to sort this out, and i’m still awaiting a resolution.

Going with experience the wait ’s gonna be long.

But its an exciting job… the problem is 90% of the people i know, don’t know what an SEO is (10% are from the web design and development industry, So they obviously know it)… When I told some of my former colleagues from three that i was an SEO… they were really happy for me as I went from being a Customer Relations Advisor to a Chief Executive officer… yes i know they were getting it all wrong but only someone out their minds would explain to those numb skulls that an SEO was different from a CEO.

Then I informed some of my friends, whom i knew from Sunrise (the office of the Late Mr. Sunil Dutt, then Union Sport Minister of India) they were upset because they thought i could do better.

Can’t blame them their understanding of SEO was Spl. executive officer of the Maharashtra Govt. (to be able attest your photocopies for school admissions) .. something that the smallest office bearer of the congress party becomes.

From then on when asked what i did for a living, I always replied that I was working for a company that’s into web design and stuff… (I do the stuff)

By the way if you didn’t know. SEO is short for Search Engine Optimiser, are people who do stupid stuff and take money from website owners, so that they do good in search engine results.

Hey but its not an easy job, it takes a lot of time in researching stuff.