On the issue of morality, or lack thereof..

I am a bit sick of this.

My Facebook friend list is beginning to look like a dalmatian lovers convention. But you can't say this out loud. People are still mourning the loss of "Amanat" / "Damini" or whatever the new name is, that has been bestowed upon the victim of the Delhi rape case.
The impassioned anger that bubbled forth on social networks following the case, has somewhat died down. Score one for the Indian govt for successfully hoodwinking the nation into thinking they cared.Young people are returning to their normal lives.Though they still pay their respects by adding a "like" to whichever "stop rape.kill the criminals" pictures that is currently doing the rounds. This gesture would have greater effect if they did not, simultaneously , go around liking pics of their favorite shirtless stars or make smart-mouthed comments on the figure of their favorite actresses.
And despite several round of debates on why rape happens, what to do with rapists,how many hours in a day do Indian policemen sleep, no one has been able to come up with any definitive answers.
I don't know the answers either and I realize, that the problem is a bigger ball of yarn than we think or know about.
Here, however, I would like to list some of the things that I really hate about my motherland. Please note the numerical sequence has no relation to the proportion of hatred I have bestowed on each topic.
Our culture
I don't know what the definition of culture is to anyone. But we have done a fine job of holding on to traditions and thus stereotypes. So now, mummies and daddies don't care what their children do, as long as their daughter and daughter-in-laws are as inexperienced as the vestal virgins. Please note I didn't write " as pure as" . Purity is a state of mind. Children lose it as soon as they stop believing in Santa Claus or the first time they say "My dog ate my homework". It has nothing to do with your anatomy or membranes therein.
Our by-stander culture
We are, it seems, a very curious race. We like to ogle at every roadkill on the highway and every little incident in our neighbor's household. It's really not our business but we like to watch then relate it to other people, whose business it also isn't. To say nothing of the fountain of opinions that flow as a result. Case in point the Delhi rape issue. You can hold as many candle light silent vigils or morchas or anything : its good, I'm glad somebody is taking actions for once. But let people know far and wide, that the two severely injured , unclothed victims lay on the road side for more than an hour before any help came. There were bystanders. They by-standed perfectly.
Double standards in our by-stander culture
Intimations from a mother to her daughter :
- Come home before its dark. In fact, let us chaperone you till you reach 50.
- Don't put on make up, short skirts, tight t-shirts.Pretend you are invisible.
- Don't jump around. I won't even explain this one.
- Dont talk to strangers, strange boys, boys that your family doesn't know.Just save us the headache and don't talk to boys at all.
Intimations from a father to his son :
- Come home.
Uneven fault distribution
You will be hard put to find one person with an ounce of responsibility. If something unfortunate happens to someone, its the victim's fault for being unfortunate, the police's fault for being just as normal, human and money-hungry as the rest of us, and the criminal's fault for..God knows..no one talks much about this category. It's never the society's fault for having a screwed up outlook in the first place. It is never the family's fault for somehow instilling acute sense of difference into growing boys and girls. It is nobody's fault that a girl child grows up very aware of the threats in society and how she has, by virtue of her gender, much more to lose, than a boy of her own age, in the event, some unfortunate catastrophe should occur. It is also nobody's fault that despite our puritanical, conservative, shallow-minded attitude, where parents insist they got you as a child from either the stork or the mela, pornography is freely available.
The govt. does its job and sues a film producer every time somebody smokes cigarettes in a film. The audience is influenced with cigarette smoking but of course, nobody takes any lessons home when item songs with the most suggestive and inappropriate body movements are played. That sells.
Like I said, its a bigger yarn of problems than we think. This isn't all. I'm just too lazy , disinterested and apathetic to continue.And that, ladies and gentlemen, covers problems # 4 through 6. Thank you for your time.

In Remembrance

After I did a post on Kasab, it seems unthinkable and almost disrespectful that I should not archive my feelings on the Delhi gang rape case and the unfortunate young soul who lost her life, while an entire nation prayed hard for her recovery.

Thanks to Facebook, people , including myself, have already exhausted their ideas on a wide range of intellectual topics including appropriate crisis behavior, women, society, morals blah blah blah.

This post is for emotions.

First for the unnamed individual who lost her life in a tragedy that is unthinkable for all of us. I insist on calling her an individual as opposed to a girl or a woman as this gender distinction is what got us into this mess in the first place. I feel for her deeply. I respect her zeal for life and her brave struggle past all odds to continue to live. And I respect her for wanting to stay alive above all else. The cruelest part to me, seems the fact that she never lost consciousness and communicated with her parents and doctors throughout the course of her treatment. What thoughts must have gone through her mind then? How much anguish her young heart must have felt, to even contemplate the possibility of an oncoming death? How terribly she wanted to stay alive and repeatedly told so to every one around her. It hurts me to even consider her last moments. It hurts me to know that there was someone, who was ready to fight, to survive and was denied the chance because the odds against her were far too much. It is heart wrenching to even think of her parents, who watched their daughter slip away from them. How hard must it have been for her father to see how much his daughter wanted to live and still be helpless to do anything. How helpless he must have felt to be unable to protect his daughter, to tell her that everything would be all right, that he was here to save her. As a parent, it must be very hard to see your flesh and blood struggle over the littlest of things. It takes my breath away to think how her parents must have felt to watch her struggle to stay alive.

What was the need for her to die? She was a 23 yr old medical student. Her family had pinned their hopes on her. They had sold their property for her education : this is unheard of in India, to spend all money over a girl's education. If there is existence after this life, I can only imagine the anguish her soul must feel, to be so unable to fulfill all the dreams that she had cherished in life.

Then my thoughts go to her assailants. All six of them. Are they regretful? People have talked a lot of inventive and cruel punishments that can be devised for these ....individuals. But what's the use of all that? I am somewhat happy as the next person, that the government has woken up in light of the mass protests and public outrage that has erupted as a result of this incident. But I can't help but feel that we can do more than just make an exemplary martyr out of the one who has passed on.

I want somebody to ask these six men if they feel any remorse. If the tales of the young lady's struggle for survival and the extent of her injuries, which none know better than these six gentlemen, bring a single drop of tears to their eyes. Do they feel guilty at all? Or are they just sorry they got caught? would any of them wish the same misfortunes on their own relatives? If they had daughters of their own, would they be able to do what they did to her? Forget what the populace wants, don't they themselves feel that they should be hung?

I read a quote by Lord Buddha somewhere, which goes something like this : When an arrow is shot, one should concentrate on how to remove the poison, rather than where the arrow came from.

Ideally I agree. Even though the young woman is no more, the poison remains with her family members and the thousands of protesters who gathered night and day in big cities and towns alike to pray for her soul. It's all nice that people are taking steps to curb rape and do this and do that. But I hope, they won't forget her. And her family.

I wonder how many tears her mother must have shed by now. I wonder how her parents and siblings are able to sleep at night, knowing the hell their beloved daughter went through. I hope somebody heals them as well. I hope they pull through this horrid nightmare and find happiness and peace. I hope people and the government don't forget them. According to the papers, they were a very poor family and their daughter had taken responsibility on her own shoulders to better the conditions of her family. Now that her shoulders aren't around, I hope the govt, takes up this responsibility. So that someone who is no longer with us, may feel a little less unhappy for being denied the right to try.

Dear sister, I don't know you, your name, what made you happy, what your dreams and hopes were, what you wanted to do in life. But I will shed tears for you and for all the pain and indignity you went through, and all the unfulfilled dreams you had. Nothing we do now can compare or compensate for your loss. But I hope you find peace and I hope your parents regain their strength to move on in life. Sorry.

Happy Birthday Baba !

So,I am known in my family as the one that doesn't remember anyone else's birthdays save her own. It is partially true. I didn't. Never could. But that was during my childhood and teenage years. Those were trying times. I had my identity crisis phase, closely followed by the gender crisis phase, eventually ending with teenage high school drama phase and the dreaded pimple on nose phase. There were some phase overlaps, making things just that much worse.

BUT. I remember all birthdays nowwww >.< And all my efforts are put to waste because my family keeps giving me reminders 10-15 days ahead of time, each time there's a birthday around the corner. Its actually very bad that your family has such low expectations of you And I did tell them that I remember all the birthdays now. They give me reminders nonetheless
Anyway....

Dear baba, happy birthday to you and hope you have many more happy ones in the future. For me, I will pray to God to give you a long life ( also drop your smoking habit)and to make me the son you want to be proud of. While, I'm at it, I will also pray my brother gets all the chances to succeed and make you proud like you have given me. And some more happiness for maa as well. Amen.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I really don't remember anyone else's birthday. But that's why you have Facebook !!

Obituary.

In a surprisingly quick and low profile move, the Govt. of India carried out sentencing for Ajmal Kasab, who had been awarded the death penalty some four years back following the Mumbai terror attacks in 2008.

I wasn't in India when it happened and all of my relatives were thankfully in and around Kolkata. So personally, I was not affected at all. This perhaps gives me no right to then comment on the historic attack which apparently killed 166 people and injured 300 others...changing uncountable lives in the process. But after reading some surprisingly insensitive hanging related puns tagged #kasab on twitter and facebook, I kind of felt sorry for .....a whole lot of people.

Starting with this poor kid's (he was 25 as of today) mother. Apparently, Kasab's family members were informed via a courier letter. I wonder how they must have felt. It is ,I believe, unimaginably hard to lose an offspring. I think the pain is even more unbearable when you lose an offspring and no one sympathizes with you.It also must be very painful to be the mother of the son whose death was celebrated by an entire nation. My heart goes out to her, regardless of her son's indiscretions.

Also, it would be an insult to not mention the 166 unfortunate souls from 2008. I don't know how many mothers lost their offsprings that day. I wonder if those people have healed at all, even though it has been four years.

I also wonder how Kasab himself felt when his mercy petition was rejected and a copy of his certified execution statement was handed to him. He was 25. Wikipedia says Kasab hailed from a middle class family in rural Lahore and his father sold street-food for a living. Apparently , he was offered an amount which roughly equals to a meager three thousand U.S dollars for participating in the terrorist attacks. Ironically, Kasab was informed that there is greatness and glory in killing (I'm assuming infidels) and then being killed. The money was to be transferred to his family after his death. I wonder how much truth there is in this statement. Not to sound like a bleeding heart, but maybe there was some humanity present in him, which made him take up such a project to earn money for his family. Who knows. I shouldn't be making idealized judgements like that. I spent five minutes researching on wikipedia about Kasab before writing this article. I am sure the Supreme court of India was a lot more well-informed about his intentions than I am ever likely to be.

According to the supreme court, death penalty was awarded to Kasab amid much deliberation and several controversies as "enormity of the crime in all scales left it with no other option". Even if I am, as a person, against the death penalty, I recognize the full impact of the fact that the court really had no other option. Even if Kasab had spent a full life of repentment, it would not have been enough to compensate for all the lives destroyed.Though, let it also be said, all anyone managed to do, was hang a pawn.He is of little consequence to either side of the battle. But for his ignorant deeds countless people, including his own family, will suffer.

An ideal way to substitute the death penalty would be perhaps,(in my opinion), extreme counselling, where the criminals really and earnestly repent and not just out of fear for their skin. But ideals don't exist in the real world. And who has the time to counsel people like a psychologist with all the faith of a vicar. It is a waste of effort. Not because I think that this method won't work. But because I know if anyone had such skills, they would be put to better use counselling trauma and depression patients...not parenting criminals.

Oh well. Just food for thought. The #kasab jokes really made me think. Incidentally the UN has started a new proposal on banning the death penalty in countries. I have mixed feelings.

Edit : "Allah kasam maaf karna. Aisi galati dobara nahi hogi...(Allah, please forgive me, this mistake won't happen again)." -- Ajmal Kasab, minutes before his execution.(TOI) R.I.P 166+1

Individuality,Women and Ayn Rand.

(Note : Contents of this post are merely my opinions, not facts or theories or accusations and should not be taken as such.)
When Ayn Rand was introduced as a topic in our Philosophy class, I had developed an instant dislike. A modern philosopher and a celebrated woman in her field, Rand represented , according to some, the voice of individualism, the ambassador for individual rights and a staunch believer of capitalism. And being a female philosopher holding her own in a field majorly dominated by men, she deserved respect.
Some people mistook her for an ardent feminist, or as they were called, a blue stocking. She was not. Clearly. And that's where my dislike took root. Not because she was not a feminist. Even I could not be bothered to take up that lost cause unless it suits me . And let him not cast the first stone, one who lives in a glass house. But, I disliked her, because Ayn Rand, despite her modernist, self serving, individualistic ideas, was a thorough chauvinist, a trait which I wonder if she even realized she had but a trait which effected her opinions and subsequently, theories, greatly.
I read and watched a few of her interviews for class. They were all illuminating. She was , undoubtedly a very interesting and forceful personality. One of her more controversial and enjoyable interview was the one with Phil Donahue, in 1979. Below is a transcribed excerpt from Ms Rand's Q and A session with the audience :
"Do you believe, there's gonna be a day, where, in the white house, there will be a female, as president?How would you feel about that?"
Rand : "I wouldn't vote for her."
-insert public outcry and dismay here-
"Would you not vote for her,because she was a woman, even if she were better qualified than any man?"
Rand : "If it falls that low, I might."I will tell you why....it is not to a women's best interest to rule man. It puts her in a very unhappy position.I don't believe, that any good woman would want that position."

The audience in that live studio had a similar outcome to the students in our class when the video was shown to us. Instant rejection and outrage. Even the Youtube comments were distinctly unflattering. Which made me want to know more about the person and understand why she made such strong statements, willfully inviting condemnation and ire on national television. Ayn Rand was no fool, after all.
Clarifications came from Rand herself, in her newsletter compilation turned book, "The Objectivist."

"For a woman qua woman, the essence of femininity is hero-worship—the desire to look up to man. “To look up” does not mean dependence, obedience or anything implying inferiority. It means an intense kind of admiration; and admiration is an emotion that can be experienced only by a person of strong character and independent value-judgments. A “clinging vine” type of woman is not an admirer, but an exploiter of men. Hero-worship is a demanding virtue: a woman has to be worthy of it and of the hero she worships. Intellectually and morally, i.e., as a human being, she has to be his equal; then the object of her worship is specifically his masculinity, not any human virtue she might lack."[1]

It wasn't just ordinary chauvinism. It was chauvinism at its extreme. And it was chauvinism without any logical reason. So apparently, if there were two individuals, lets say, a man and a woman. And they are both endowed with the same superlative virtuous qualities, and the woman is the man's equal in any and all human virtue, she ought to still admire the man, based on his masculinity.

There is no winning this argument. Unless you grow a pair. If you know what I mean.

Rand's definition of the perfect woman also creeped up into her fictions. In both of her famous works, "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged", the lead males and females epitomize her ideals. The male protagonist invariably is the shining beacon of individualism, rising over the squalor of mediocrity and the sea of greed, politics, indifference and general lack of merit without a scratch. He has every larger than life merit to his name and grandiose ideas on how the world should be. Even his adversaries are all in awe of his superlative talents and conspicuously over- polished individuality.
Then we have the female lead. A strong personality and a perfect match for the hero as she matches him wit for wit -- thereby justifying why the hero picks her, of course. But just as the picking has commenced and the deed is done..literally....her personality deserts her faster than you can make a cup of instant noodles. Overnight, a strong woman is turned into a mopey mess who has lost all zeal for life and lives to periodically aid or thwart (depending on her mood swings now) the hero in his quest, all the while pining for a lost love that is apparently too good for her.
Obviously, by the end of the story said epitome of superlative goodness gets his way and the girl, with some invisible force funding for everything. 
It seemed, the hero and his lady love were not just figments of Rand's imagination. They were different aspects of her personality. The hero was what she ideally hoped  to be herself. The iron clad determination ,exemplary will power and firm control of emotions found in her protagonists were traits she not only admired but also cultivated in herself. The hero was who her platonic mind aspired to be. On the other hand, the heroine was a blend of power and dependence. Rand's romanticized notions of femininity adored the conservative ideals of life and tilted power balance between a man and a woman. The heroine was thus, who she wanted to be. Aspirations come from ideals, want comes from need. The rest is guesswork.

Ayn Rand is a staunch believer for individualism. She was also a romantic at heart. And thus her views, while non traditional, lacked the stability only an impartial observer could give. I think this is the reason none of her opinions got the validations of a proper theory.

Her peculiar thoughts on women kind of inspired me to look further....straight into her personal life, courtesy wikipedia and some other sheeznits. Despite belonging to a conservative era, Ms Rand followed her heart. And I say this mildly. Her life was the material for films. During her long and only marriage to Frank O' Connor, Rand had also been very close to long time friend and publicist Nathaniel Branden. The closeness was deemed less than appropriate on a number of levels. They were both married, and not to each other. And he was twenty five years her junior. Also, they were all family friends. 
Consider the level of ardor, which would have compelled a strong woman in the very conservative fifties, to throw all caution to the winds and engage in an affair with her married family friend who was old enough to be her son.Knowing that such a move would disrupt four lives in the process. It goes without saying that the sense of compulsion that she felt in pursuing the affair, and also, the accompanying romantic notions may have also colored her philosophy. The affair lasted quite long, and with the knowledge of everyone involved (happily or otherwise). 
I wonder what would have happened had she been a jilted lover instead. Would she have turned into a man-hating spinster? Have you heard of the saying, "The fox says, the grapes are too sour" ?
Ideally, for a philosopher's words to hold any merit, it is imperative that such a person be impartial so that while making verdicts on human behavior, he may look at his subjects from an outsider's point of view.
A certain level of detachment, is therefore required. Of course , not too detached that he does not even recognize the feelings in his subjects, let alone categorize them properly.  And also, not so deeply involved like Rand, to be unable to distinguish between theories and personal choices. 

Bah I could continue on this tirade for so long. I wish I did it when my paper was due -.- Maybe I will add moar to this post laters xD