Sid-O-Scope

A recent controversial article by Chetan Bhagat tried to highlight a moot point of how the Bhakts (as the Narendra Modi supports are called on internet) are sexually frustrated, male egoist and are people with no proper English dialect (which might summarize the last three characters in his books or any Bollywood film for that matter). But while his observations are completely without any research (as are his flat stories or half-cooked Bollywood plot boilers) the main purpose of this article to set the record straight. Lets look at the facts without any masala added to it. Since the dawn of internet there were trolls who loved to seek attention. They first started email marketing sending countless emails about the exclusive offer they had. But as technology grew closer we brought all sorts of people together and with them we brought these trolls near us. This is a global phenomena and not limited to India. A definition of an internet troll by Wikipedia is as follows In Internet sla...

Dear Nirbhaya,  We have never met but I would like to start off by saying we are sincerely sorry. We are sorry because you paid the price for our mistakes. We are sorry that you had to die for our mistakes. Even in your death we could not give you peace, even in your rest we denied you peace. We are sorry for the fact that we agitated and protested for gender equality but we stopped after the rapist were caught. We came down on streets braving the curfew, the band the water canon and we struggled. That struggle was nothing compared to the struggle you were facing.  We are sorry for the fact that we never stopped or protested against the uncles when they asked our sisters to be more 'gharelu'. We are sorry for the fact that we never argued with our mothers when they explained to our sisters the geometry of round rotis. We are sorry for the fact that we came home expecting cooked food expecting it to be our birthright. We are sorry for not stopping our parents wh...

Many years ago we made a tryst with destiny, we choose a nation for ourself. A nation ruled by people, for people and of the people. Yet somewhere down the line, we failed. We failed miserablely. Yes, India is a nation ruled by democracy, it is the biggest democracy in the world and yet, our democracy is broken. Did we really set our for this path, perhaps we did, perhaps it was a big mistake. Organizing a nation of 1.2 billion people is not a joke, big civilization couldn't do that. But what the government and administration should do or did is not the purpose of this blog. Lets look at the 10 things India needs feedom from.

From time to time nowadays certain people choose to start a one sided debate against me over my views. I won't go to the length of calling these voices as an organized effort by a political outfit or a group like those high class ignorant journalist. No, these people are passionate and true believers about their political leader, spiritual leader or religious leader. I don't deny making a provoking statement so that one of these start a debate on Twitter, the intention is not malicious, mind you, because debate improves knowledge, progresses society. Journalism was once a profession that welcomed debate, nowadays it is imposing views between commercial breaks. But bashing journalist is not the point of this post (I just do it for fun), the point of the blog is this people are afraid of change. People are afraid of things that change and will go to any length to prevent it from happening. On the eve of Penguin rekindled the age old battle between creative liberties a...

India is my country. All Indians are my brothers and sisters. The vague memory I have from my school days is singing the national pledge without giving a thought about its words or what it actually meant. When the boys hit puberty, a most common running joke was about all Indians becoming sisters (not sure if the same joke ran on the girls side). The school got over and we moved on to college, people forgot the national anthem, let alone the pledge. Life hit hard and fast, it was survival of the fittest in the wild. The rosy picture got over and we realized by the time we will complete our education, there are absolutely no jobs available for those anything less than an engineer or a doctor. It was dog vs dog world out there and survival was imperative. Entering corporate world was not a big relief since 3000 of other people were fighting for the same thing. So all in all, surviving in India was a big fight and if all Indians are my brothers and sisters, it was Cain and Abel all ove...

Lets say hypothetically, you live on a illegal land mass without paying a single penny of tax to acquire it. Lets say hypothetically you use stolen electricity from the pillar to lighten up your house. Lets say you hog the water supply, pollute the atmosphere by going for toilets in the middle of the street without regard for the hygiene or society. Lets say you have no ambition, regards for the law and order of the city and then you hog the city footpaths for your business over which, obviously, you can't pay taxes or any money but will pay cops some money, in turn increasing corruption. So lets say you do this all, in any civilization across the galaxy, hypothetically, what would you expect in return? In some cultures you would be, hypothetically, killed brutally. Welcome to India, where doing any or all of the above gets you a 1 BHK flat, reservation in education system and also a good job assurance. Its not that bad if you look at it. I mean, most of these people do ...

Patriotism is the notion that you are suppose to do something for the place you are born in with some presumption that the place you are born in is the best, irrespective of what stats indicate. The concept of Indian patriotism begins with standing up at the different versions of national anthem as the movie theaters compete with each other and extends with every passing year saluting the national flag on television. It also comes to light everytime there the cricket team comes to play and  Ironically very few people cheer for the hockey team, which for some reason, is the national sports. Obviously every Indian of every caste and religion will get angry when you talk bad about the country. If you ask who is the most patriotic, most of us will agree the armed forces are amazing for sacrificing their lives for us. Then, if we are talking about arm forces we should also talk about the Indian police service, they also carry a gun and their lives for nation. But then what ...

Reservation is a funny thing, everyone wants it, everyone fights for it and after standing in the line for 2 hours to get the caste certificate, after proudly getting admission in the most premiere college in the state for 10% less than cutoff and after carrying the responsibility of 300 years of misery and slavery of the entire tribe, the candidate walks the shallow halls of a professional college, only to realize, he was hoodwinked. His entire caste told him this was the path to success, the sure-shot way in which the upper caste earned money but here, there is nothing. Nothing at all, shallow halls that remind him that he was nothing compared to everything in place. When it comes to earning the right, there was no caste system. Everyone was and is miserable. The upper caste remained upper because the lower caste never thought otherwise and now 300 years later when he got the chance to make it right, he realizes it is a long way to go because the essentials of why the ...

The problem with having an open mind is every person with a opinion feels it is his mandatory duty to come and put up a sign board in your mind of his ideologies. There are those who feel it it their birth right to tell me how wrong am I to say that Kasab deserves a free trial or how wrong am I to stop at a traffic signal at the dead of the night. Whatever the ideologies, I simply smile at them and put my hand on their shoulder. Its as simple as that. With the recent sad event of bomb blast in the city, people had a general opinion about one common thing. Some people said, it was Kasab birthday. Some said, the Government should start doing something for the state and to begin with Kasab. There were many, many forwards the social network took on the name as if Kasab was the epicenter of all the terror activities in the world. With the news storming around and the confusion about Kasab birthday, there was another little news let out by a high prolific leader he cl...

Whenever someone comes to me with the idea of signing the janlokpal bill, I pity at the person with such a sweet and innocent hope that one document is going to solve the problem haunting India for last 200 years and more. Yes well, I don't believe that janlokpal is going to solve the problem anymore than the reservation is actually going to help any stupid backward class person grow in life. When we look at the whole world in general, there are many skeptical views on janlokpal bill. True believers will go to extreme length forwarding emails to everyone asking them to sign some petition against the corrupt people. The skeptics will then go and ask questions like what will happen if the lokayukt is corrupt etc. etc. etc. Both these arguments as they amuse me, they also are a cry for help. People are frustrated about corruption and the way it is affecting the country and want to do something about it. People in initial stage of frustration are still having the hope that s...

After the recent stripping for patriotism campaign a new anti-corruption wave has  hit the country, it has became a fashion statement to shout, 'Mera neta chor hai'. People are twitting day and night about the corruption and asking for support to Anna in his 40 hours fast (so far) Anna Hazare is a brave man, he chose to go on a fast until death exactly after world cup and before the start of IPL. Yes, good for him, people would have to choose between India vs Pakistan and him, the choice won't be nice. Corruption is a serious issue happening in India. There must be some sort of voodoo magic happening that is corrupting every person ruling the nation. The Jan Lokpal bill proposed by Anna Hazare and some other publicity hogging social activist (don't blame me, I support Hazare don't ask me to support Sarabhai) is magical, amazing, incredible and dangerous. If we look at the history of India, you will find many similarities in what is happening now and what has ha...

India is a democratic country. Many years ago, on November 26 1949, a bunch of people wrote a document containing 395 articles in 22 parts for a total of 117,369 words to normalize, classify and control a region of 400 billion people. Anything beyond the ordinary was squashed and dumped in the asylum and electrocuted. When you are born you automatically get the citizenship of the country. You have no choice in it. Then people like me who are not born normal have to wear the mask of normality. Smile at the people who in a 'normal' world would be at the other end of the shotgun. Try to mix with people who usually have a flawed sense of noramilty, who will obey the law like an obidient dog even if their life is shunned and destroyed by it. Some people will argue that obeying the law is common sense. Its not a compulsory thing but a moral thing, obviously. If 400 million people follow the similar guidelines, natural order follows, everything happens as it should. There are no s...

The oldest memory of Republic day I have is that of my parents watching the republic day parade. Obviously as a small child I was assumed of having no brain and choice and come what I may say, no one would agree tom and jerry is better than the parade. So profound effect it had on me, that last year, I decided to see the parade in the stands, which was a boring experience, should I add and a pickpocket decided to use his right to freedom and stole the five hundred rupees from my pocket. But then again, they say we should feel proud about the republic day parade and have a sense of patriotism on seeing the tricolor unfurl.  I never felt so. Obviously as a symbologist, I know that symbols have meaning and if conveyed properly they can move mountains (literally) or transform the thinking of a human being, but then also, if forced to believe in something symbols render no meaning at all. On the night of 14th August 1947 at the zero hour (00:00) the Union Ja...