Editorial Four

When the singer's gone,

Let the song go on.

But the ending always comes at last

Endings always come too fast.

It was a rather different night. Even as I walked into the auditorium alone, the very difference with the time I had done this at the very beginning of the semester struck me at every step. The energy that marks the Music Nights was just not there in the students that filled the seats till the very end of the Audi. Tired haggard faces greeted me, some with a smile, some just with an exhausted wave. We had had 3 tests in the last three days and had, by the looks of it, managed to zuc most of them. Strands of conversations all around me still centered around the week gone past, with greetings mostly murmurs on ghoting and irritated denials.

I was fashionably late by more than half an hour, which meant I reached just in time for the start of the night. Even as I settled to a rather lonely seat behind the Soundz booth, a stream of 1981 batch people streamed into the Audi. For a moment or so, the Audi seemed to come to life. They were everywhere, taking pictures, talking to the BITSAA volunteers, dancing, singing. A special request was sent out to play “Munni Badnaam” with 50 year olds dancing enthusiastically to it.

As for me, I settled down to enjoy the music that had started by now. I woke up one and a half hours later, with Shounak's brilliant growling in Sanatorium revebrating in a mostly empty Auditorium. There were still a few energetic Alumni nodding along with it. I walked to the front. The songs changed for a softer note, and I could see psenti-semites dancing along at the left side of the Audi. It seemed like they were stuck in a time warp, for even as the songs changed those few timeless steps never did.

I walked into Neeti after a rather unsuccessful tryst at dancing with a friend. “I am going to Hyderabad for an interview,” she said. “I will send in my article once I am there.” A quick hug and she was gone in the melee of camera flashes. And surprisingly it was all around me, those little attempts to keep the soon-to-be-forgotten memories in transient ties of Facebook albums and Gtalk requests.

What is it that makes us BITSians? Is it the fact that a part of us will remain forever in those long night time strolls to ANC, shivering in the dense fog? This is the part that we will leave behind, our legacy, scratched in the all-remembering sands of Rajasthan. And love it or hate it, one day I guess we will come back to it, if only to revel in the music of a generation 25 years younger, and feel young once again. I guess we never really do say goodbye.

Rithesh had just finished singing Say Goodbye when I made my way out of the Auditorium. People were on stage packing up, when one of the Music Clubbers started playing Sheila on the guitar. And for the first time in the evening, or in days perhaps, I felt like smiling.

Life goes on I guess.

Editorial Three

My third issue thankfully comes equipped with more information about the date. 8th October, I am informed by the bold tiny letters below the header. The hiatus since the last one can be explained by BOSM and Electrical and Electronics Engineering Compulsory Disciplinary Courses. The hiatus hence can be explained by OASIS and Electrical and Electronics Engineering Compulsory Disciplinary Courses. There has been one EPC issue brought out after this that was solely for creating hype about Oasis and thereby did not have an editorial. So here goes.


Third year has a weird way of putting things back into perspective. I had meant to write this editorial with a strong punch of CDC-induced cynicism and talk about the more important things in life. But then again, there are just so many scenarios in which a  bunch of smiling second year-ites (and a first year-ite) walk into your room at 3 AM in the morning, wake you up for your editorial and ask you about tooth fairies. And even  after a severely exhausting day goneby and a similar one yet to come- such random act cannot but bring a hint of a smile on your face.

Welcome to Pilani, the Neverland of half-baked technocrats and shikanji addicts. There are weird times when you feel like you are stuck between two non-happening panels of a boring comic book. I guess it is this Garfield like existence that often forces us to look at things with a bit of drama forced in them. So, yes, we have book fairs in the single floor of a book shop, we have 'dates' in the Oyster Labs, we have 'trips' to a mela at a ten minute walking distance from the campus and so on.

A good friend of mine gave a lecture this Sunday on Higher Studies and the way to get to Grad Schools and the like. And in between the very intense questions asked (" Aur Soumyadeep, weekend kaisa raha?") there were a lot of important points that were raised by the Speaker and the audience alike. During the course of the lecture, while explaining the priority order of the way Grad Schools evaluate applications, he was asked the importance of extra-curricular‟s in that order.  "Somewhere about the sixth in the list I think..." he said. I am guessing that's somewhere near the place where you mention your achievement points in FIFA or your striking likeness to Frankenstein.

It makes you think, statements like that. Here I am typing away at the sixth priority while the first and the second languish for attention at the back of my dusty shelf. And even as we walked out of the lecture at around 11, thoughts of the future were kind of a heavy shadow that all of us carried. There is solace in company they say, as a group of us low CG guys launched into a tirade on the CDCs and our sad lives in general. And even as I took our dejected little path back to my hostel, my ancient phone hummed with the arrival of a new message.

"Meeting about Oasis at 12."

Ah well, sixth aint so bad. After all, its also somewhere near the position where Laxman  comes out to bat.


If anyone is jobless enough to have a look at the issues, they can be downloaded from the 'Read Our Issues Online' section in http://epcbitspilani.wordpress.com/ .

P.S. - Special Word of thanks to Angad and my formatting team who took the pains of keeping me awake and even helping out with the last sentence when I finally did sleep off.

Editorial Two

This one was for the Election Issue. It was brought out the week after the previous one. The date was probably around 28-29th of August. This came out the day before the elections. 



"We are going to Basgaon at 1:30. Come to the ANC circle."  

It had been a rather exhausting day at office, with some 5 back-to-back classes. I received the message as I trudged back to my room. Even as I was about to reply, I ran into a certain candidate for the nth time. Ever armed with his manifesto and a toothy smile that would put the Joker to shame, he had already explained the minute details of his Cycle Plan to me thrice. Even as he made his way towards me, I knew the eventuality of a fourth painful explanation.

Basgaon. This village is no remote reality in the midst of some famine-struck Vidharbha district. Walk out from these walls through the small gate behind the Dairy Farm and keep on going, through the arid fields and the sparse vegetation. Walk for some 15 minutes and you reach this village. All those fables that you might have heard about rural India somehow seem to merge into the real world in Basgaon. There are various Mohollas for various castes. A road separates the well-to-do minority from the Below Poverty Line majority. The mud roads are dotted with decrepit houses. The sanitation system is non-existent with water-borne diseases running riot among the villagers. An empty closed dispensary will stare back at your hopes of medical facilities and an empty school building do the same. Most of the villagers are employed at NREGA (National Rural Employment Gurantee Act) sites that dot the desert like horizon. Their major work includes digging large pits, which once completed are deserted and the whole circle is repeated at some other location. Most of the money earned is spent on hooch and goes to the Theka owners (who happen to be some of the few affluent people in the village). The highest ambition in the village is to get a job in BITS.

I suddenly jerked back into reality by a rather sharp voice.

"So, did you think about my Cycle Plan?"

"Do you know about Basgaon?" I asked.

He looked back at me, uncomprehending.

"Buses? No that's not me..."

"Never mind."

Editorial One

Its nearly been a semester since I posted anything on this blog. Its been tumultuous times,or well whatever being stuck in a discipline you know nothing about can be. I haven't really written much other than my editorials for EPC in this period. So for what its worth, I am just uploading them and hoping they bring some life back to my near-dead blog. Hope they're enjoyable.

Don't remember the exact date, this one was in the middle of the third week of August. Somewhere near 22-23rd August I think.

There’s something happening here,
What it is, ain’t exactly clear… 

It’s a nice rainy day afternoon as I sit in the comfort of my room with a mild headache and a Microelectronics Book trying to get some work done. It has been another satisfyingly colorful couple of weeks. The lazy heat-struck summer days that we normally associate with this part of the Pilani calendar has given way to much more pleasant rainy day afternoons. Incessant rains herald in the new semester in a blah blah blah…
Ok I guess that’s enough of the weather. It’s BITS Pilani, and how it has all changed. Even as our cars rolled into the campus, the change was in the air. I mean very literally too, with the smell of fresh paint mixed with the rare odour of wet soil welcoming us to a whole new BITS.

Things have changed, not least of them ourselves, along with conspicuously absent friends, marking their departure in a declining trail of phone calls and text messages. The institute has changed, and the sparkling white walls shine in the lazy mellow sunlight waiting for the opinion of its students. You stand in the shade of the newly painted clock tower, cribbing about the new Technology building ruining the beauty of back IC. You nod your approval at revamped laboratories and boosted-up net speeds. You curse the missing redis in inopportune moments of extreme hunger. Yet in the midst of absent-minded opinionating about the world around you, you notice these confused new faces around you. Slow, shy, formal interactions soon turn into full blown lachcha sessions as you regale them with stories of legends of the campus- myths of a yellow clock tower, roadside redis with their delectable sam-chaat and dusty blue lime room-walls. You show them the few remaining strips of the old paint on the back side of the clock-tower as you introduce them to the mysteries of the four faces of BITS’ own Father Time. You talk of legendary BITSians and their exploits of the yesteryears, even as they or perhaps even you will never meet them. You talk and one day hope to join them in their hallowed portals yourselves.

And soon, with or without a affidavit, in the midst of the of the C’Not sessions and ANC treats; department interactions and club recruitments; one out of every four faces that you see everyday evolve into a new identity that they will carry with pride for the rest of their days, that of a BITSian. So here’s to stories and lachcha, lingo and lives, rains and redis, folklore and fairytales.

Here’s to the BITSian circle of life.

“It seems so weird now. For four years I have seen alumnus come back after 25 years and talk about how nothing has changed since their time. And I come back after 6 months and… Wow.”

-2006 Batch Pass-out 

Death

The sky was red the night my grandfather died.

It was a hot end-summer day, rather uncharacteristically so. It had been raining the few days before that. And it was nearly seven in the evening when Anita, the nurse who had been looking after him for the last few months came up to my mother teary-eyed.

“Dadababu aar nei didi (He is no more)”, she murmured. She didn’t talk much, a rather priceless quality for her vocation.

My aunt broke down. Anita shuffled out of the room.

Run up the stairs. Run down them. Run up them again. Get caught in the middle. “Ok kid, I'll give you a toffee , or maybe even two , JUST TELL ME WHERE YOU KEPT MY GODDAM RAZOR!!!”

Speckles of shaving foam all over my face. Signs of a regular shave badly interrupted.

Mission Accomplished.

It was nearly eleven by the time all formalities were done with. A hearse waited in front of my house. The house was full by then, relatives and friends crowding in every room. The sickly sweet smell of rajnigandhas filled the air even as a few of the more religious minded muttered prayers under their breath. The shrunken body of my grandfather lay in the middle of the bed. His eyes were closed, a couple of tulsi leaves on them.

For a moment there, as I blankly stared at him, I suddenly felt a twinge of sorrow for the tulsi tree. It was a fledgling plant, just a handful of twigs planted about a month ago. Funny how the mind remembers.

“I planted this tree when I first built this house. And now its roots are damaging the basement roof. So, I’m cutting it down. Which part of it don’t you get?”

“Cutting a tulsi tree is years of bad luck, you stubborn old man!!!”

“I’ll take my chances.”

This was not the first time I had visited the burning ghats. Even as the car neared the burning ghats, the traditional khai thrown on the road by other funeral cars served as a morbid bread crumb trail to the location. A mammoth building on the shores of the Ganga, these ghats are the proud resting place (as the signboards claimed), of Rabindranath Tagore. How getting burnt at a place and then getting your ashes thrown into the river can make that particular place your resting place is something I have wondered ever since I read that sign for the first time. I remember wondering about it again that day.

Dadu used to say that he was out on the Kolkata roads the day Rabindranath had died. There had been mass hysteria as the body of the great man had been carried through the crowded Kolkata streets with millions throttling to touch him. “I got to touch him”, he would recount later, with an obvious pride in his voice, “I lost a shoe in the process, but I touched him.”

Even in the dead of the night, the ghats remain a rather busy place. We reached there at around midnight, only to find it bustling with death (or was it life ?). Every five minutes a truck loaded with mourners and the deceased would descend upon the ghats with their cries of “Bolo Hori, Hori Bol” renting the night sky. Or sometimes, it would be a much quieter lot, shaking their heads in the midst of thick cigarette fumes at the solitary tea shop. We soon found ourselves in a queue for the electrical furnace Number 4 (“Fast or slow?” “Huh?” “Electric or wooden?” “Umm... Electric…”).

“Cummon Kid, Buck up!!! Hurry up!!!”

“It’s not even 6 dadu…”

“Damn right it’s not 6. The Shop opens at 6. You want to stand behind that hag from next door?”

“I honestly don’t care dadu…”

“Well, I do. And I say we run. Cummon now…”

It was a long serpentine queue in front of the furnace. People smoking, talking, crying. Blank faces, happy faces, sad faces. Interspersed with the sleeping dead. Peaceful in their last 4’X7’ space on earth. It can be rather odd starting at dead faces. Contorted in agony of their last moments, or at calm with a lifetime spent. It’s all there.

And also the goats.

Three goats in a village.

Strolling majestically amongst the living and the dead in the ghat.

Tied to three trees in a row.

Feeding on the abundant stale flowers and leaves strewn about the corpses.

A six year old child feeding them a handful of dried leaves.

One of the braver ones start munching on the garland on one of the lesser guarded corpses.

An old man with prickly tiny white hair walks towards them with a huge scimitar in his hands.

It keeps at it, moving from the torso to near the face.

A small spectre-like crowd gathers as the ancient scimitar goes up and comes down with an unearthly swish. The child moves back a step, a streak of red dots on his face.

I couldn’t see the mouth of the goat anymore. Hidden behind the face and the mass of flowers about it, I could but vaguely see what it was that it was chewing on.

The old man is stringing them up, making a mala of the three still bleeding heads as the writhing bodies are carried off by the crowd. They will come in handy in the marriage feast.

I could see it now. The flowers have mostly been cleared up by its appetite. It’s biting at the ear now.

He stands up with a grim smile on his face and the monstrous mala in his hands. He walks towards the child, a thinner red-trail following his path, a path tad different from the much thicker blood red ones leading to the kitchen.

A trail of blood appears at the ear. Sickly red, reluctant to move, but I could see it nonetheless.

Laughing, he throws it around my neck. And tells me to run along, the marriage can’t start without the nitbor.

A summon for the next in line cuts through the slumbering 3 AM air, soon followed by howls of realisation. Other aggrieved sleepy mourners sit up to see what is happening. Or just find a better spot to live through the night.

I grimaced.

“Bolo Hori, Hori Bol.”

The Book Thief - A Review

‘He does something to me, that boy. Every time. It's his only detriment. He steps on my heart. He makes me cry.’

It is not too rare when we find Death as a character of a story. The Hooded One, the Angel of the Night with his stereotypical scythe. However, of all the images that a characterization of Death might bring to mind, we can hardly imagine any of them saying something like this.

"I can be amiable. Agreeable. Affable. And that's only the A's."

Welcome to the world of The Book Thief, Markus Zusak’s masterpiece about the life of a German child, Liesel Meminger, in turbulent WW-II Munich. Liesel is effectively an orphan. She never knew her father, her mother disappears after delivering her to her new foster parents, and her younger brother died on the train to Molching where the foster parents live. Death first encounters nine-year-old Liesel when her brother dies, and hangs around long enough to watch her steal her first book, The Gravedigger's Handbook, left lying in the snow by her brother's grave. And so begins an illustrious career of book thieving from as varied places as Nazi book burnings and the Mayor’s wife’s library, wherever books are to be found.

In the midst of these dangerous times, Liesel’s foster father hides a Jewish fist-fighter, Max Vandenburg, in his basement, and their lives are both opened up and closed down at the same time. He's the son of a friend of Hans from the first world war, the man who taught him the accordian. Hans had promised to help Max's mother if she ever needed it. Max and Liesel become close friends, and he writes an absolutely beautiful story for her, called The Standover Man. It's the story of Max, growing up and coming to Liesel's home, and it's painted over white-painted pages of Mein Kampf, which you can see through the paint.

"Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day. That was the business of hiding a Jew."

The book is hauntingly beautiful, both in terms of the story and the style of story telling. The terrifying ultimate doom that a war brings is beautifully portrayed through the melodramatic pronouncements of the end at the very beginning. The eventuality of Death and destruction that the War brings is painted in vivid colours. Zusak also creates some amazing characters, Death being perhaps the best of them. Death is stripped off the morbidity that surrounds his standard portrayal and given a human look. He is someone with feelings, lonely, strangely attracted to children, gentle with the souls entrusted to him. He is an eternal observer of the human race, haunted by its follies and weighed down by the lost memories of forgotten mortals. Liesel is very real, a child living a child's life of soccer in the street, stolen pleasures, sudden passions and a full heart. All the while bombs drop, maimed veterans hang themselves, Gestapo take children away and a delirious skeletal Jew fist-fights with the Fuhrer of the German people. The foul mouthed Rosa Huberman, and the kind silver-eyed accordion-playing Hans Huberman (Liesel’s foster parents) instill many a light moment into the story, just as their love for each other, Liesel and Max can make one teary-eyed. In one of the most moving parts of the story, Rosa Huberman goes to asleep every night after Hans leaves for war sitting upright with his accordion strapped to her.

My personal favorite character in the book would however, have to be Rudy Steiner. A 9 year old deemed insane by most for his worshipful admiration of the black athlete Jesse Owens, Rudy creates some of the most intense, poignant yet innocent parts of the story. Liesel’s best friend and fellow book thief, Rudy’s naiveté, kindness, his glorious athletic feats, his intense need for a success to redeem himself in his own eyes and his unfaltering love for Liesel is sure to take you back to your own childhood.

‘In years to come, he would be a giver of bread, not a stealer - proof again of the contradictory human being. So much good, so much evil. Just add water.’


The book is definitely not a light read. At times, it can even border on the morbid. The little peeks into the future provided by Death fill every page with the predominant fear of the eventual. Only a writer of Zusak’s genius can make it work, painting the vivid landscape of a past tainted by the blood of millions through the eyes of the innocent and the eternal at the same time. This is a book about the power of language and words, and the love and respect they inspire. Perhaps it is just as fitting that Zusak uses his talent to bring to life this passion in the story and also in the reader.

With this book, Zusak has proved himself to be a master lyricist of the written word. His haunting, profound, almost poetic description of the lives in a small town stays like a lilting symphony of words in your mind and lifts your spirits. All-in-all, a Must Read.

Calcutta: Where time stops by for a cup of chai

I was gliding across the endless sands that form my realm.

I came across a river, a river in the midst of nowhere. A thousand beautiful stars sparkled in its calm rippling waters. I walked along its silent shores.

I saw a small shanty. An old man came up to me as I reached it.

“Cha Dadasaheb?”

I had a sip of the golden liquid. I sat there by the shores of the river and I watched.

I saw destiny. I saw three lost ships create ripples on the quiet river waters. I saw a different race come onto the tranquil shores. I saw a new age being created. I saw the foundations of a marvel in the heart of a village.

I saw destruction. I saw the ancients of the East clash with the guns of the West. I saw blood spill. I saw brothers kill as a forced annulment separated they who had been at peace. I saw the homeless weep with the endless.

I saw death. I saw a whole nation weep as one man died in his quest for freedom in a land far far away. I saw the death of a patriot who had dared to dream. I saw the death of a million hopes with him. I saw denial.

I saw delight turn into delirium, as a hundred thousand strong ocean of humanity come together to make the heavens reverberate with their emphatic roar. I saw modernity meld into the primeval as the carnal emotions of a repressed race vent their passions on the splendid greens.

I saw despair. I saw generations lost in the quest of the meaning. I saw the tears and the blood as unrest dwelt. I saw a sea of misguided souls come back home.

I saw desire. I saw the desire in the faces of hungry children. I saw the desire in the eyes of visitors in the face of a delectable cuisine. I saw the desire reflected in the eyes of young disciples, I saw the desire sparkle in the eyes of old docents. I saw the desire to succeed, to leave behind a past of destruction.

And I saw a dream. I saw a city that accepts all that beg for its shelter. I saw a city of immaculate timing. I saw a city of green. I saw a city of the future in the shadow of the marble monuments of the past. I saw modernity blend with the coffee and pakodas of the roadside rok.

“Dada, aar ekta cha?”

I was woken from my reverie by the same old man. I looked around. I was in a white room, its walls decorated with pictures of many of the faces I had seen.

I smiled.

“Na.”

As I walked out of the India Coffee House, the hot dusty wind of summertime Calcutta stung me.

It’s good to be home.

Randomness

This is hardly a post. This is more of just an expression of the realization that I just talk a lot. So, I guess I’ll just let the people who have something meaningful to say do the talking.

Amen.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'.

Bob Dylan

Stories for the less sane

Oh, come with me to old

Khyyam and leave the Wise

To talk; One thing is certain, that life flies

One thing is certain, and The Rest lies;

The flower that has once blown, forever dies.

Rubaiyat of Omar Khaiyyam: Quatrain 26

How does one feel when one can feel life slipping out of his hands? How does it feel to see the ebbing waves of a life long lost as you surf through the tsunami of a life newly embraced? How does it feel to bear the accusing stares of a world forsaken, boring into the back of your head, cruelly lashing out to you with the pains and sufferings of generations spent in torment and servitude?

I don’t know what I have experienced today. For all I know, they are experiences of the crypt of forbidden adventures. It will fade away with the morning light as the mellifluence of the music around me drowns me in its melodious notes.

Music is the true essence of a human existence. No, this is not some extremely clichéd way to appreciate the efforts of the Music Club and its bid to create, ‘The B****iest Night Ever’. (Even though no amount of praise can be enough for the brilliant mixture of songs, transcending above the narrow specifications of genre and the musical divide.)

Today is a day of realizations and great expectations. While my past plays Miss Havisham, ever reluctant to move on and flashes images of days of joy, the seductive lure of a future gaudily flashes its beauty in the flickering neon light of its temporary life.

Brilliance of a day (well)-spent is in its temporal beauty. Days are not forever, lives are. How rationalist can we get in a world where survival’s law sees it fit to let a poor child starve, while a rich one does the same, only the reasons at the different poles of the social and metaphysical spectra?

I can see a bird from my window. The bird looks back. It chirps. And then it grows. Grows into a Charizard, a dragon and an Toruk. Are they the same thing manifested in the manifold imagination of an escapist race? Or are they different avatars of the ultimate iconic eye in the sky?

This is insane.

There is no such thing as a black orchid.

This is insane.

I’m tired from talking, Richieu, and it’s enough stories for now.

This is insane.

And the light… The light was unbelievably bright.

This is insane.

Makes you wonder how much of this world is true.

This is insane.

Same thing that we do every night Pinky—try to take over the world.

This is insane.

Issa long way yet, till morning.

This is insane.

It would be a stronger world, a stronger loving world to die in.

This is insane.

And this isn’t Sparta either. So, no semi-naked heroics.

Damnation.


When you’re in a dream and you think you’ve got

You’re problems all mapped out

Pieces of the scheme seem to rattle up

And then to rattle down

And when you start to fall, and those footsteps

They start to beat

Then you know you’re going down

Yes you’re falling on the ground,

And you know you’re going down,

For the last time.

‘Going Down’- Lou Reed

FUCK PAKISTAN

I am sure that most of us, faithful tabloid reading schmucks that we are have had our visual and all other senses assaulted by the latest endeavor by the Times Group to save the world. The front pages carrying the large caption.

‘Love Pakistan.’

‘Aman Ki Asha.’

‘An Indo-Pak Peace Project.’

‘THE FIRST STEP.’

And a red and a green dove trying out the latest sex position in pigeon world.

Well, I guess the heading of this blog post kind of makes my feelings on the matter very clear.

Fuck Pakistan.

Terror, hatred and fanaticism are apparently the words very unduly related with Pakistan. The article claims that we have been fed these words in daily doses over the last 60 years.

Bull shit.

The words have not been fed to us in enough amounts. If it had, then we wouldn’t have committed the grave historical mistakes that we have been committing very consistently over the 60 years. That we started committing a few months into the birth of our nation. That we have committing ever since. Diplomatic blunder after diplomatic blunder. Tashkent, Shimla, Agra. We have been harping about the brotherhood of a nation that was never united with us except under the whip of colonial masters. We have been cheerfully waving our hands at them while the President of the country declared to kill our country by bleeding it death. We were cracking smart-ass jokes when they were committing the best minds and half of the national budget to developing a nuclear bomb after India had one. We were even silent when an Axis of Evil was created connecting China to Pakistan through Kashmir, land that is through all legal documents, Indian.

We have done all that. We have lied to ourselves that it’s the politicos and the dictators that are the original villains. We have been waving for 60 years, hoping, praying that someone on the other side will wave back.

They haven’t.

It says that the people across the border are ‘like us’.

They are not.

The fundamental difference between the two countries lies in the fact that Pakistan is a failure.

Pakistan is a failed state in every respect.

Its pretense of a democracy has long stopped functioning. There have been dictatorships followed by puppet corrupt governments much worse than the latter. Each attempt at stability by the people has seen bloody coups with beheadings to boot.

It is presently a nation at war with itself. There are more Pakistanis dying as the result of the Frankenstein of terrorism that they created. And even as this ‘first step’ is being taken, the latest ‘people’s government’ hurtles towards another army led coup.

And even as every cynical reader would snigger at the very mention of democracy and point at our own, I have just one finger to point at them.

Guess which one?

In spite of all its shortcomings, the Indian system continues to function. In spite of corrupt politicians, communal riots, nepotism, and demands by everyone from the Mormons to the Rajnikanth Fan Club for separate statehood.

It is a diseased, polluting, broken-down machine. But it functions. And it functions better than most countries in the world. And keeping in mind the diversity, differences and all that jazz, we should be damn proud that it does.

Which basically brings us to a very basic question that I have been meaning to ask.

What do we want to do with our time and money?

Do we spend our efforts in taking sides in the schizophrenic psychotics of a multi-headed rabid animal while it spends its time in cooking up the latest method to kill us?

Think about it.

I guess even self-righteous schmucks should have better things to do with their hands.

P.S.- Gonzo rocks. If only people would start listening to me now.