Michael



Around a decade ago during a casual chat about music, I mentioned to a friend of mine that Jackson defined the eighties. ‘No,’ he replied, ‘He was the eighties.’

Those who had their formative years in the eighties would certainly agree. You are touched by his music regardless of which part of the globe you came from. In our lives, we cherish some First-Time moments that are very special and very fresh that we'd cherish for the rest of our life. Like hearing the the initial beats of Bad; the shock of Jackson turning into a zombie in the Thriller video, The bursting joy of watching the moonwalk, and the lilting hiss of a voice that caressed You Are Not Alone.’

Those were the joyful and entertaining moments of our lives. We danced, however awkwardly, to Beat It, Billy Jean, Bad, The Way You Make Me Feel, Black or White, Remember the Time. We thumped our feet angrily to Earth Song, They Don’t Really Care About Us. We cried to We are the World, Heal the World, and Liberian Girl. Several decades later, we still see Jackson in the sound of hip hop, and dance movements in every wannabe artist in the world and actor in India. His Thriller revolutionised the concept of music video where the intended effects of the film still works with the first time viewer.

The hungry and insouciant racist tendencies of the western media never fully understood the artist and never left him in peace. For all the wealth and incredible fame, he lived a traumatic life. His anguish and struggle with the media cost him his art and his work. Eventually we ended up being the losers. Imagine having lost ten more Beat Its or Earth Songs. The world paid the price of Jackson being an American and being an Afro-American. Had he not changed his skin tone, would he have been as successful? That’s the question for which we’ll never know the answer. People respond to this question with contemporary examples like Beyoncé, but we must understand that we live in a totally different generation. We especially live in a post-Jackson era where the concept of colour is seen totally differently. Had Jackson not changed his skin tone, would we have looked at Beyoncé and Halle Berry differently? And how much of soul searching did the white society was made to do with that strange act of plastic surgery? How guilty would the baby boomers have felt about Jackson’s surgery whose fathers jailed a black woman for just occupying the wrong seat in the bus?

Above all, the questions that were raised about Michael Jackson were not raised about other white artists of the past who had behaved far more erratically. Artists like Jim Morrison, Syd Barrette and Ozzy Osbourne overdosed on LSDs, turned violent towards women and even ate a live bird on stage but those were often explained away as the outburst of their creative genius but Michael got branded as Wacko for allegedly sleeping in an oxygen tent.

Finally, and finally Jackson gets the peace that had been eluding him in his life. After the constant bickering of the media, the scrutiny of the justice system and the endless ridicule of the society having taken a huge toll on his art, there is peace at last. One of the fans said in the TMZ Website: ‘God bless you Michael, heaven just got another beautiful angel.’

Exam Fever



’I have never let my school interfere with my education – Mark Twain’


The inexplicable stress and the performance anxiety; the need for doing endless rote of the incomprehensible subjects; the unnatural and inhuman comparison of who in your classroom is better at History and who at doing Math. The impalpable anguish of studying unknown subjects from the books awkwardly edited and poorly printed whose contents were politically motivated.

That used to be the horror of studying for the board exams. The parents didn’t really knew why they were doing it and their kids who shouldn’t care but were put to extreme amount of stress, anxiety, and hardwork at such a tender age. The reform measure introduced by the HRD Minister Kapil Sibal will make the board exams optional and the common entrance tests would determine eligibility for college admissions. Though this doesn’t explain how the danger of common admission tests becoming like board exams would be prevented, the very psychological pressure of ‘Passing 10th’ would be eliminated and that should bring a lot of comfort to the children. Parents though, used to the competitive nature of schools, may oppose this move and may even be concerned about how the future of their children would be determined. But that is only temporary and, to a little extent, even irrelevant because improving the children’s welfare alone is the concern behind this move.

Above all this, there is a very big problem that the HRD ministry must address: The plight of the school curriculum in the state education sector. The curriculum in the state board is designed without applying any of the internationally known instructional methodologies, written carelessly by the ill-equipped people, and equally poorly edited. The ghost of corruption haunts even the education sector, which makes for poor quality of paper and inferior printing practices. So the resultant text book is unreadable, unattractive, dull, and boring.

Much worse, the content of these books are often tweaked to suit the mood and preferences of the current ruling politicians. The history, literature, and political ideologies of the textbooks change dramatically based on what they believe. As we know about these politicians, we are grimly aware that often their ideologies are illiterate, unscientific, and ridiculous. This must change. The central government must make serious initiatives to redesign the entire national curriculum. School education is far more important than defence and currency. Allowing the state governments to manage the state education is like making state-level defence ministries and separate currencies. We all know that would lead to chaos and disaster.

Allowing our children to study the lessons dictated by people like Karunanidhi, Jayalalitha and Mayavati is a lethal poison that is being constantly fed to our society. Scrapping the board exams is just an interim medicine to treat the symptoms. The real antidote is still overdue.

President or Philosopher

‘There is no greater security challenge in the world today than turning the tide on nuclear-proliferation, and pursuing the goal of nuclear-free world,’ is not a line from some university scholar’s book about nuclear proliferation.

‘A war with no end, a dependence on oil that threatens our future, schools where too many children aren't learning, and families struggling paycheck to paycheck despite working as hard as they can. We know the challenges. We've heard them. We've talked about them for years,’ is not a paragraph by Arundhati Roy, though it is easy to detect because she would have written these lines with much more passion, vigour and sincerity.

A piece about Barack Hussein Obama is highly overdue in this blog. From his campaign days he has been hailed as one of the greatest orators of our time. There was even a documentary in BBC about rhetoric of the past and present and how Obama’s oratorical skills have helped him win the election. Win the election may be yes but BBC perhaps did not analyse how those skills are going to help him run the country and, like any other US president, run the world.

It is time to question even his public speaking skills. Obama’s statements seem to be filled with philosopher’s anguish or jargonised presentation of politically correct banalities. Often it becomes very difficult to decipher what exactly the point of his winding verbosity. The times when we do decipher, we see the attempt to blame the previous administration on every problem that he currently faces.

Oratory should be highly appreciated when it is backed with performance. As for the performance, there were real tests such as G20, North Korea, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and currently the Middle East. In G20, it was actually Brown who stole the show and the media, who eagerly expected a chartbuster from Obama decided to spend more time with the First Lady instead and focused on the charm emanated by the couple. North Korea, which agreed to dismantle their nuke infrastructures during Bush regime, boldly conducted another test further weakening America’s hold over the so called rogue states. As Taliban advanced into the mainland Pakistan, US were content with showering continual financial assistances to Pakistan without obtaining any visible commitments on deliverables.

In the Middle East, as the President is all set to ‘charm’ the Muslim world with his oratory, trouble is already brewing. Just as Obama is condemning the settlements, Mark Regav, a government spokesperson for Israel, has already rebuffed the Clinton’s demand for reduction and complete end to settlements. Regav has clearly spelled that ‘Israel will continue to allow some construction in West Bank.’

Obama’s statement on Sri Lanka’s ethnic conflict came too late and contained too little. It only helped slightly discomfort Sri Lanka’s strategists, as the rebels declared that they are laying down their arms ‘as per’ the American president’s request and Sri Lanka, firm on its campaign, had to offer some weak justifications in order to continue its onslaught.

It’s about time the president, who created history by becoming the first black president, began creating other histories that justify all his onslaughts against Bush. It’s also the time that the media, which denounced, criticised, mocked, attacked, reviled, and caricatured Bush, stopped eulogising his oratory skills and started questioning his management skills.