Seriously speaking

Some say my blog appear serious. Some say it reads like school imposition. Some say it's nice, a customary remark and close the window in a hurry. Some say they look forward to my posts.
I want all of them to know that at this age and at this stage of my life, I have no option but to write to live. I would have saved them by becoming a music composer or a tabla artist if I've decided my career some eight years ago. Too bad for them that I was too busy drinking and smoking and chasing skirts then.

What I mean to say was it's not my fault that I'm writing or chosen this as my career. It's actually nobody's fault. As a consolation they can perhaps wonder what would have happened if I had become a composer. I would have sung a couple of songs too. Just imagine.

Writing is much better.

But it rained

It rained heavily this evening. Chennai hasn't seen such a heavy rain in the recent times. This is what the cliche lovers would call "cats and dogs". Two of my colleagues went out to get drenched. I desperately wanted to go too. But I had to compile and send some files. By the time I finished sending, the rain had stopped.

p.s. The title is a sneaky lift from Parikrama's classic number.

Swati Sengupta

I'm reading Swati's blogs after a long time. I was shocked to see our HR forwarding her CV to me. For a moment, I childishly thought I'm going to work with Swati again. When that moment passed, I realized that it wasn't going to be. I knew she wouldn't be interested in Chennai. Our HR found it out after a few STD calls and a couple of mail exchanges.

Chennai has nothing to offer Swati.

Then I should write about her. She makes me wonder, especially when I read her blogs, how such an aggressive and bitter intellectual can reside inside such meek looks. Her pleasant demeanors are a mere facade. Also, she reminds me how two people can think so differently. I get enraged at many of her blogs for the sheer variety and emotionally provoking content they offer. She worships Kurt Cobain, Sylvia Plath, adores Bob Dylan, feels deeply for the world of Albert Camus, loves Calcutta (she perfers to call it that way), enjoys her leisure afternoons in Bottles & Chimneys and hates alarm clocks.

She is a classic example of how I longed a woman should be. But then, I know that I'm being subtly chauvinistic in imposing my ideas to define Swati. But I'm happy to note that, however I tried to bottle her into my own idiosyncratic definitions, she is going to bounce out to surprise and mock at my stupidity.

If you are reading and liking this, you should be as thankful to Swati as I am because she introduced me to blogging.

Veer Savarkar Controversy

Veer Savarkar's controversy is an interesting depiction of how hypocritical and shallow our politicos can get. I'm not very sure what was wrong with Veer Savarkar's career that merits such derogation by our so-called 'secular' leaders. In Gandhi's assassination case, the highest courts of our country have acquitted him. So we just cannot attach him with that case any more. We shall not forget that the same crowd celebrates Rajiv Gandhi as an 'innocent' and 'gullible' leader because the courts have acquitted him in the Bofors case.

So that makes Veer Savarkar guilty of only one crime. That's having written an apology letter to the British authorities while he was languishing in the Andaman jails. I feel that's a huge crime. Forget the fact that he set up an anti-British movement in the heart of London, that he was a role model for many extremist-anti-British groups across the country, that he has written some of the most beautiful and poignant poems on the nation and its people, that he sensed the rise of Islamic-extremism long before any one else did, that he languished in Andaman jails in some of the worst humane conditions ever recorded in the history.

The fact that he has simply written an apology letter to the British in the middle of the most torturous conditions is proof-enough that he cannot be called a patriot. The fact that communists supported British Raj during the world war is not important. They are patriots. The fact that fearing the opposition, Indira Gandhi curbed the democratic rights of all the citizens, imposed emergency, jailed all the leaders is not important. The fact that she encouraged Sikh separatist movement and Bindarenwale to simply to destabilize Akali Dal is not important. She is still a patriot. And her statues should decorate every city in India. The fact that Rajiv justified anti-sikh riots when his mother was assassinated isn't important. Rajiv is a patriot.

Annadurai pleaded the British to stay in India. If they were to leave India, he wanted them to at least retain Chennai Presidency. He thought minus British India would go back to stone age. He believed that’s where we were living before Brits came here. But he deserves a statue in every street in Tamilnadu.

These activities aren't very important. They are actually political decisions, which the great leaders take from time to time. What Veer Savarkar did by writing an apology letter in a hugely stressed condition is a shameful and a despicable act. So his picture should be removed from the parliament and the plaque should be taken out of the cellar jail and thrown in the Andaman Sea.

Long live the Indian democracy.