How dare you!! Yes We Can too

“The 12th person to do so“ – said Kiran, glued to the television with unimaginable levels of excitation in each cell inside her body.

Sten Guns, AK-##, noose-to hang, grenades, fire extinguishers, mosquito sprays, rat poison, pesticides, The ‘Taliban of India’ shall be nipped in the bud completely before it is allowed to spread like the wildfire that did in Afghanistan. How could they even think of forming such an ideology and then assaulting women in pubs when the basic ‘laws of the land’ permit women to enter pubs, consume alcohol, smoke cigarettes etc. How dare these people try to teach the real ‘Indians’ the culture of India. Don’t you guys understand that we are the real India and we set the trends and thereby the culture of India. We are free to consume alcohol and enter pubs any time of the day. If you stops us, we’ll get the media support, we’ll set up facebook groups, we’ll form a huddle near the India Gate, we’ll stroll to Jantar Mantar in demand for your execution. Dare not teach us any kind of ‘Indiannes’. What comes to our minds when we see ourselves as Indians is ‘democracy’, ‘cricket’ and painted faces while watching cricket. We are obsessed with gadgets, cars, bombs and other toys of super citizens of a to-be superpower. Beware. We can file public litigation cases if you tell us to sing ‘Hum honge kaamyaab’ instead of ‘Yes We Can’. Yes We Can.

Please understand that we are free to crucify anyone who interferes with our personal matters, for e.g. anyone doing some kind of moral policing and telling us that low waste jeans are so not a part of our Indian culture. But we can afford to praise Obama for his dislike for such kind of fashion. Yes We Can.

Please understand, we are free to be addicted to the news channel on 20^th January and remember for eternity that Barack Obama was the 44^th President to take oath. And we can feel completely fine about being unaware of what number is Pratibha Patil on the list of Presidents Of India.

So what if our stylish Tennis player sits in front of our national flag with her feet pointed towards it, and you hooligans, we can just slay you in the media if you question her preference for ‘I Love NY’ t-shirts. Yes We Can.

Please understand that we are free. We are free to choose Eminem without even lending an ear to Pandit Jasraj. We can freely join dancing classes where we learn to move like Shakira, so what if we don’t know if Padma Vibhushan Birju Maharaj is a Kuchipudi dancer or Kathakali dancer. Yes We Can.

We are free to know eagerly about who won the Oscar or The Nobel Prize, so what if we can forget the correct ranking of Padma Shri, Bharat Ratna, Padma Vibhushan in decreasing/increasing order of their importance. Yes We Can.

We are free to jump lights when no one is watching and we have a really important meeting to attend, but we can appreciate for at least the next two years since our arrival from the US, while socializing, that they have very strict traffic laws and surprisingly people obey them too. Yes We Can.

Then why shall Mrs Ahuja worry about her son going out for a smoke with his friend. He is in free India. Yes He Can. Why should Mr Arora get tensed when he hears that his daughter had hard drinks at a gig last night? She is an Indian. Yes She Can.

This country gives us the same freedom the way The United States or The United Kingdom gives its citizens. Is it just our passports that are the last remains of anything that indicates that we are Indians? Or is it the paint on our faces when India plays in the World Cup of Cricket? The horrible acts of Sri Ram Sene cannot be tolerated, goes without saying. But why not act in a professional manner and centre our debate on a more critical issue, which might even be something what this Sene stands for. It is time to think for once what comes to our minds when we think about ‘being an Indian’?

And by the way, if at all, any of my patriots feel a little disturbed for not knowing what number is Pratibha Patil in the list of Presidents of India, you can look back to the first line of this post.

Satyam - Our experiments with truth

Satyam. Raju. Forged accounts. Fake employees. Inflated figures. More forged accounts. No doubt ‘Enron of India’ has just confirmed our claim to fame as a ‘global superpower’. And yes, comparing the enormity of the fraud with that of Enron’s, we are now true competitors on a global platform. So just like 9/11 of India is slowly fading away, ‘Enron of India’ shall pass too in the same way if we don’t consider it as one of the most important case studies in the history of our corporate frauds. Two questions lie before us. How many more Satyams do we have in our corporate kitty? What is there for us to learn from this saga?

To answer the first question actually depends on We The People. If we treat this fraud as serious as 26/11 and pressurize the government in the same way, even an ephemeral collective out pour from our side could at least expose some part of the iceberg or clear the air about companies like Wipro which, like Satyam, have been blacklisted by World Bank. How can every citizen contribute? Any employee can certainly be a whistleblower (they get huge rewards these days) whenever he senses foul play in the company where he/she works in. Of course, losing a job in these days would be one of the reasons one might not want to do that. But losing one’s integrity on any day is probably the worst fraud one can do with oneself.

Secondly, Learn? For us there is not much except that we must introspect and throw away the Raju inside us, whether he lures us to steal Rs 10 or 10 million. Educational institutions must act collectively and impart moral and ethical lessons at various levels in a creative fashion. Being creative here is important. We don’t want such an important subject to become like Physics or Mathematics, where huge lessons in truck-load of books are studied inside classrooms and hardly make their way outside in the everyday life of an individual. Gandhigiri in books was hardly being practised in our modern India. But when Sanjay Dutt marketed it creatively, it at least made people aware and now even has many young people subscribing to it.

Jeffrey Skilling, the Enron-chief, was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison. I am sure our Mr. Raju must have read this piece of news. If such punishments do not act as deterrents, they hold no meaning at all. I ask the Indian Judiciary to get real. Like most other thugs, the Rajus were seeking fame. So before the court sentences Raju into some custom made palatial prison for umpteen years, let him be given a perfect goodbye, at least by his shareholders. New Delhi’s central park in Connaught place Place has a huge pole where a man can be tied and the park can accommodate all shareholders easily. Shoes please.

Modi-fying India

Robin Hood, was an ace thief. And so, he was aptly known as The Prince of Thieves. A land of crooks must have its leader as one who has either masterminded these crooks or has done something far bigger in terms of crime. Remember the way his gang used to propitiate him? When our corporate warlords could not really make something out of the offer made to them to govern our country in the aftermath of 26/11 (ask Shobha De & Suhel Seth), they are now voicing their frustration by publicly advocating the election of another warlord, that of mass murderers. At this juncture, we need not rile about the deeds of such an improbable candidate, instead we must realize that we first need to create an image of a Prime Minister who would be apt for our nation and then see who fits in the position best.

Practically, it would take hundreds of eminent people of our country and enormous discussions amongst them to come to a conclusion about the characteristics of an ideal Indian Prime Minister. However, in the context of today’s circumstances, it is possible to briefly mention some particular qualities that the Prime Minister of this nation should certainly not have, if we are to even dream of becoming a global superpower in the coming years, decades, or may be millenniums.

7 Race Course Road shall certainly not house someone who has communal division on his mind. In Vir Sanhgvi’s language, we don’t need a brash demagogue as our PM, shouting questions at the crowd and waiting to hear a huge roar in response. Also, he should not be banned to visit our coveted friend, the United States and propitiate it when India is in despair. Yes, Narendra Modi has the charisma of a regional leader, somewhat comparable to what NT Rama Rao had in the 1980s. But can a mass murderer who sponsored the riots in 2002 lead a secular nation? True, that there is no evidence to prove that Modi ordered the killings, but he fought the election that followed those riots on a communal agenda and by seeking to link every Indian Muslim with Pakistan. It is hard to believe how ‘icons’ of corporate India, Anil Ambani & Sunil Mittal can back such a candidate. The next general elections shall prove that statements of such ‘icons’ have no impact on the awakened citizen of India. Meanwhile, sit back and enjoy January 20^th, when the Big O starts working on his promise to bring change to the people of America and erase the racism dwelling in the country.