Voter, voter on the roll, who's the stupidest of them all?

Fasten your seatbelts folks! Stupidorama is upon us!

Narendra Modi today launched a scathing attack on Manmohan Singh.
Narendra Modi thinks Manmohan SIngh is a weak prime minister. His
reason - nobody felt his absence when he went abroad for two months on
medical leave!!! Therefore, he is a weak prime minister.

Two days ago, Imran Khan was busy at the Pakistan Australia match in
Dubai claiming Pakistan has been involved in a war that is not
Pakistan's, and as long as America was in the Afghan neighbourhood,
there was bound to be strife! Wow!

Now, PMK Founder Ramadoss has gone on record saying Prabhakaran of the
LTTE is not a terrorist and is the leader of a liberation movement.
So was Gandhi, but he didn't terrorize anyone, did he? He didn't
kill, he didn't maim, pillage, threaten, assassinate or as much as
condone violence of any sort. Is Prabhakaran to be equated with the
Mahatma?

What is this? A conspiracy to unleash stupidity upon us in the hope
that sheer volume can make us rethink our intelligent assessments? On
the contrary, this is a fantastic opportunity for us to laugh
ourselves to death!

If nobody felt Mr. Singh's absence for two months, I'd think he and
his team have got all ends covered so that no panic hits the country
in that period. If Manmohan Singh's absence from India immediately
throws the country out of gear, what comment would have been more
likely from the BJP? "We have a really strong prime minister! Look
at what happens as soon as he steps out!", or "The Congress is a weak
government. Look how quickly they panicked the moment the PM steps
out for a little medical break!"?

This is too easy, you idiot Modi! For all the greatness you are
supposed to be endowed with, you certainly let us down with this
lowpoint. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes on what you can do, not
what others can't do.

Imran Khan, the pretentious idiot from Pakistan, who once claimed ALL
fast bowlers tampered with the ball, is now claiming Pakistan has
nothing to do with the war it is in the middle of. Well, need we
remind this clown that it was one Musharraf who led a certain
misadventure against India in Kargil, that the ISI is the support and
training backbone of several terrorist organizations, and that
Pakistan is the safe haven for Al Qaeda supremo Bin Laden? Haven't
they been conferred the title of "Epicentre of terrorism"?

Imran, you dope! What do you think we are? Madarasa dropouts from
Swat that can't think beyond humping our sheep? Shove your rhetoric
up your fancied arse and think about what Pakistan is. It is a bloody
fourth world country sliding into anarchy, guilty of every crime in
the world including terrorism, illegal arms trade, illegal nuclear
proliferation, and an absolute blemish on humanity. If it wasn't for
your country and its stupidity, there wouldn't be a place for fools
like the Taliban to hide, and find safe haven in. If it wasn't for
fools like you, Pakistanis wouldn't have to live in delusion. As far
as I remember, you didn't win a single election you stood in, so I
suppose your people know you better than you know them.

Ramadoss, you idiot, I am even surprised you know about Nelson Mandela
and Yassar Arafat. But I am not surprised that you would equate
Prabhakaran, the Tamil thug, with either of them. Nelson Mandela
suffered years of imprisonment and is a Nobel Prizer winner. The PLO
is a legitimate liberation movement that has never expressed itself
militarily outside its own domain in the Palestine Israel theater.
The LTTE has, and on our own soil. The bastards killed more than one
Indian citizen in an act that had nothing to do with the liberation of
Tamil people. So, no matter what your delusions are, they are not
just terrorists, they are nothing but terrorists.

The fact that Modi and Ramadoss have both gone on record with
incredibly stupid statements simply shows how low the standards are
for being in the Indian political fray. Now, Imran joins the band of
buffoons. Not to be outdone, Shah Rukh Khan claims he is the biggest
selling point of IPL! I thought his stupidity was done with after he
humped Shoaib Akhtar during one of the KKR presentation ceremonies
last year. I hear Shoaib Akhtar is still not fully fit. Okay, that
was mean, but look at the standards set by the eminent people above!

Hah! Just days after I mocked Advani's claim of "bringing back"
India's money from the Swiss Bank, here is Swiss Bank saying our
"politicians' claims not based on facts"! The "official" Swiss snub
to Advani categorically says they will not support any kind of
"fishing expedition"!

No matter how stupid and ridiculous some of these voices are, we have
a media that sells itself by putting these fools on the air. We are
just unfit for any sort of greatness. It is that simple. Why do we
even bother being concerned?! We are a lousy country with lousy
minds, and we now have the economic power to stay stupid.

Just a moment ago, on News X, Prithvi Reddy, the co-founder of
SmartVote, an organization to encourage people to vote, accepted after
they managed to get results of 40 odd percent voting, that the apathy
is so deep, that it is not going to change with a few campaigns! Nice
going, buddy. I would have told you that without any of the pains you
went through.

Not a terrorist???!!!

DMK supremo Karunanidhi certainly went mad for a few minutes when he
said Prabhakaran is not a terrorist. If he is not a terrorist, what
is he? God? Who else has the impunity, the intent and the idiocy to
kill people for reasons far beyond reason? Who else terrorizes? What
do you call someone who doesn't just indulge in but lives by the force
of weapons, leads an organization known for unleashing death and
destruction upon soft, undefended targets?

Karunanidhi also said some people in his organization might be
terrorists but not Prabhakaran. Yeah, right? So, if I am a leader of
a gang of thieves, what would I be? A saint? This guy is a nut job.
He ensured he eliminated the leaders of other organizations like TELO
and the TULF, who were all fighting for a Tamil Eelam. He also
believed that in the event of an independent Tamil Eelam being
created, it would not be a democracy, but indeed a dictatorship.
Thank God Karunanidhi confessed having a difference of opinion with
this fool on this point.

There was some credibility to the LTTE even after the huge mistakes of
taking to terror and militancy in the first place. It all evaporated
when Rajiv Gandhi was killed in Sriperambudur. After all, whatever
Rajiv Gandhi did by sending the peacekeeping troops to Sri Lanka, he
did as the Prime Minister of India, not as an anti-LTTE or anti-Tamil
move.

The fact remains that the LTTE is a banned organization in India, and
Prabhakaran is its chief. For Karunanidhi to endorse him in any way
is nothing short of contempt towards India, and needs to be questioned
from every angle possible. If the same yardstick were to be applied
to the terrorists in Kashmir, then the LeT and other such
organizations would also claim they are fighting for the liberation of
Kashmir! Does Karunanidhi even know what he just stepped into? Or
does he have to eat it to find out?

As far as I am concerned, the LTTE committed an act of terror on
Indian soil. I loved Rajiv Gandhi, but I'd have the same amount of
anger towards the LTTE if they had killed an Indian beggar. How dare
anyone aggress upon my country and how dare one of our politicians
even contrive to suggest that the chief of the LTTE is not a
terrorist?

The LTTE has always worn shoes too big for its own good. To grow a
terrorist organization into a well organized, sophisticated fighting
force is one thing, but to try to give it credibility akin to a
nation's armed forces is something else all together.

By building its own air force and fleet of boats manned by the Sea
Tigers, it should be abundantly clear that the LTTE sought offensive
capabilities that far outstripped the needs of defending Tamil
territory. Two piston engined aircraft hardly make for an air force,
but the fact is that those planes actually flew missions and caused
destruction.

Sri Lankan Tamil people were very often coerced into sending its young
men to join the LTTE, and those living abroad with families in Jaffna
and other LTTE controlled areas were forced to contribute monetarily.
In the last week, there have been reports that the LTTE is using its
people as human shields and shooting anyone trying to flee their last
stronghold. Sounds like a dictatorship to me, all right.

Now, the big question - if Prabhakaran is the leader of an outfit that
has terrorist elements in it, and somehow by illogical exclusion, if
we cannot call Prabhakaran a terrorist because of that, then why can't
he disown them? He is no Gandhi. He is no leader, the one that
demands respect at gunpoint. He is no human, the one that kills
others for whatever cause. Prabhakaran is a bloody thug in a self
adorned uniform, and has become too fat for his own good.

Karunanidhi and other Tamil politicians might have their own theories
with or without agendas about Prabhakaran, but the fact remains that
the same people, in hundreds of thousands, that these politicians
claim are being targeted by the Sri Lankan army, have indeed been kept
captive and in poverty by the LTTE. If he was such a great leader,
why didn't he create opportunity, prosperity and happiness for his own
people. Simple - he doesn't care!

Now, as an Indian, I'll say this to Karunanidhi and any of the other
clowns who pretend to be representing people of Tamilnadu - I don't
care about the LTTE. I wish they were obliterated off the face of
this earth, and I wish they are all hung to death. I presume
Prabhakaran won't be caught alive, and he should be ashamed of himself
if he allowed himself to be caught alive after he advocated the
cyannide necklaces for his band of terrorists. But I wish he is
caught alive and brought to justice.

There is something very unnatural but immensely satisfying about
bringing a terrorist to justice in a court. Kasab is going through
the process in India now, and a lot of people would lynch him if they
get their hands on him. But that's not what we signed on for. We
signed on for a democracy, a civil behaviour that may seem strange to
people like Kasab and Prabhakaran. It is very disappointing to have a
dumb statement like the one that came out of a seasoned politician
like Karunanidhi. It just shows that neither terrorists nor
politicians can escape their own illusions.

We should learn to do without both.

Get the morons out!

Something seems to have rubbed off from the US presidential elections
onto our poll campaigns this year. A lot more than something,
actually, considering we had some young urban professionals actually
campaign for Obama in Bangalore!

Now, we hear the youth of the country are being asked to come out in
large numbers and vote. I wonder why? Barack Obama had a million
volunteers on the ground on election day. In India, with three times
the population, we'd be lucky if we get a thousand to do any work
voluntarily. We're just not that sort of people.

Today's Indian urban youth have a lot of bright qualities, but being
well informed is not one of them. Neither is being involved in any
sort of movement beyond the token environmentally conscious act like
using recycled paper, and never mind going on a drive for no reason at
all. We're asking these bunch of morons to vote? What for? And what
happens after they vote? More votes to the same bunch of idiots
asking for their votes? After that, what?

How many of our youth are actually qualified to make a voting decision
of any sort? Not that there is a great deal of idealistic polarity to
choose from, but while Tata Tea tries to sell more tea bags through
these elections, our politicians run helter skelter playing horse
politics, and our electorate should know bloody well that as soon as
the elections are over, we're back to being neglected. If we are
lucky, that is. More often than not, we'd be impeded from making any
sort of progress.

Our youth seem to be waking up all right, but that's because all of a
sudden, it is fashionable to be politically noisy. Rather, it is now
politically acceptable to be noisy, as long as it is fashionable. Are
our youth capable of joining any debate, on any side of any aisle?
Absolutely not. Sure, they'd have a great deal to say about freedom
of expression, fighting againt AIDS, global warming, and all the
things that American television tells them to get fashionable about,
but do we think any of them know a damn thing about pharmaceutical
companies addicting our poultry to vaccines and diseases we never had
in the first place, and do they know anything about human trafficking
that our politicians are involved in?

The one thing we don't need in any larger quantities in India is
noise, and that is what our youth are on the national political
landscape - noise. They have their own aspirations and god bless them
for that, but let's not mistake that for any revolutionary potential
that can transform India. That is simply not to be expected.

They will send out e mails with pictures of how dirty some holy spot
is, and how overpaid our politicians are, but they wouldn't as much as
pick up the phone to call the electricity board to tell them that a
power line is dangling a bit too low for comfort, or call the local
MLA to tell him to do something about the garbage that hasn't been
picked up for a week.

Our youth are enthusiastic about a lot of things, no doubt, but
enthusiasm is a poor substitute for ability. Our able youth have seen
through the perils of getting involved in Indian politics and have
cleverly avoided that path all together. They are unlikely to be
wooed and they are unlikely to be seduced by the promise of having to
fight a system that is endemically rotten. They are the ones that
quietly plan their way to their private successes. Ask them about the
country and you will get a polite "no comment".

Their less able brethren, however, are rich pickings for catch words,
and product sales through - you guessed it, fashion! Today it is Tata
Tea telling them to vote, even though most of these young idiots
wouldn't even know their local candidates. Tomorrow it will be
L'oreal telling them they should vote for someone with darker skin!

Two months ago, it was America telling us that they have created
history by voting a black guy to the highest office, and nobody to
date has publicly questioned the validity of that claim, considering
one of Barack Obama's parents is white! I wonder if they would have
celebrated him as the first white president if he had won the election
in Kenya!

I can understand Americans in their natural fervour for racism running
with appearance, and Barack Obama is decidedly more black than white
in appearance, but what is the matter with our youth? To what have
they lost their ability to think? Is thinking not fashionable at all?

They are all armchair activists and advocates, and waking them up will
simply make them unbearably, visibly, stupid. That's the kind of
embarrassment India can do without.

A tale of two headlines.

Two headlines from The Hindu today, online -

"Engineer from Chennai plunges to death while bungee jumping - Harness
snaps, victim suffers head injuries; no ambulance at site. The police
identified the victim as G. Bhargava who used the weekend to check out
the adventure sport organised by Centre for Adventure and Rejuvenation
of Environment (CARE)."

AND...

"BJP, Congress are jittery: Karat - Only Leftist policies can save
country from doom, says Deve Gowda. JD(S) president and former Prime
Minister H.D. Deve Gowda said the country was on the brink of an
economic and social collapse. "Only a Leftist economic and social
policy can arrest the slide that we are witnessing as a nation," he
said."

What is interesting is that in both cases, the common Indian man, is
treated with negligence. In the first case, a man paid money to get a
taste of adventure and lost his life, and here we are, with more
political parties trying to get mileage out of a bad economy, even
while predicting doom. Forget how jittery the Indian citizen is right
now, let's talk about how jittery the BJP and Congress are! How
enlightening.

The adventure sports organizers, (aptly called CARE) have no bloody
business conducting the event with no ambulance close by. Saving
money, that's what it comes down to. They could have seen it coming,
but they refused to. Asleep at the wheel!

Deve Gowda, in the few moments he was actually forced to stay awake
during his Prime Ministership, didn't do anything remarkable, apart
from earning himself the title of "Former Prime Minister". Here is a
buffalo with a long stint in the cesspool of Indian politics, claiming
to be the wise one, predicting an economic and social collapse for the
nation, going far enough to say the Left can save us, but not telling
us what their plan is! I can bet my last rupee he doesn't know, and
he doesn't care. Deve Gowda is a highlighted example of the worst of
Indian traits - Rank Incompetence.

This is India - incompetence and unprofessionalism in large enough
doses. People actually lose lives and livelihoods because we live in
a cauldron of mediocrity. There is not a single politician who is
urging Indians to pick themselves up and perform better in EVERYTHING
we do. Why is that? Because it is so simple it escapes everyone's
notice? Or do we actually think we are doing great? Probably both.

I have been dragged over a hill in a parachute organized by an Indian
adventure organization when the parasailing rope snapped! I had
enough luck on my side to escape with bruises and trauma in my legs,
but it was rank incompetence all right. The attitude I remember most,
was one of happy relief, not of shame. Nobody addressed the
incompetence issue and that was the last time I have ever taken part
in any organized adventure in India. We just don't cut it when it
comes to ensuring anything remotely close to reliability.

I have also seen first hand how Deve Gowda could sleep through some
very prestigious, important occasions and I have seen how he could
ignore great opportunities if his mind was on a samosa. Now this is
the fool telling us at his ripe old age how the country must be run?
Give me a bloody break. Apart from his historically recorded
laziness, what does he bring to the third front? A gale wind blowing
the wrong way? Blame the samosa.

If there is something to be sold, Indians are selling it - and that's
not a crime in a capitalist world. But to sell danger, like
contaminated medicines, rash drivers, and thieving politicians -
that's got to be an India special. Is there any "front" that can
actually make people ask the right questions? Do we even care that
much? How many horrible deaths do we have to die before we ask
ourselves if we are good at anything at all?

Leftist ideas have gone down in the drain in the sweep of free markets
and capitalist opportunities. So, the free market has also let us
down, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with competitiveness.
The Left wants incompetent people to have an equal chance at
mediocrity. Somehow, miraculously, we Indians have refused to give
them much of a chance at the Centre. The couple of doors we opened
for them in Kerala and West Bengal haven't delivered anything worth
remembering. In the latest sham, the Singur fiasco has been
spectacularly damaging.

Now Deve Gowda is suddenly scared of capitalism and wants the Left to
do something - well, not really. Look a little closer and he is part
of a coalition, the only coalition that will actually have this lazy
bum.

No matter who we vote for - that will just be like having a different
person strapping us to the same harness that killed G. Bharghava. It
just doesn't matter. It is the CARElessness that has taken us to such
abysmal lows. We need to fix that, before we choose who gets the job.

Indian Taliban

I had a conversation with a BJP party member yesterday. It grew to a
debate, contained many arguments, and made me a better informed Indian
citizen.

No topic was spared and no depth too sacred in this exchange that led
to the proposed Ram temple, the demolition of the Babri Masjid,
terrorism, and a variety of other topics. It isn't as if this one
party member represents the entire party or its resultant standing
point on any issues, but some revelations cannot be ignored.

For the sake of convenience, I shall refer to this person as Mr. M.

It was my observation that the BJP was communal and had a communal
image that sparked off the entire exchange. The ground was neutral,
at a mutual friend's place, where neither of us had to hold back, be
politically conservative in our opinions, or defensive. I wish there
could be more opportunities like this.

M asked me why I thought the BJP was communal and I immediately
referred to the Babri Masjid, which he vehemently supported the
destruction of! He then reeled off a list of religious shrines and
places that were Hindu that were destroyed and/or converted to Masjids
and churches over the last few hundred years. He wouldn't buy my
argument that no matter what happened in those years, India was born
on the 15th of August 1947, and whatever we inherited had to be
treated as our heritage and respected.

M mentioned a few other disputed Hindu religious places that are under
attack by elements that, in the name of minority politics, wanted to
expand their hold over India. I conceded that those were wrong too,
and the ongoing legal dispute in itself indicated our constitutional
right to disagree and seek refuge under a law we all signed on for.
Then came the damning statement - that our Constitution was a piece of
paper that could be shredded and thrown out and written again as one
pleased!

When I disagreed, the threat came out - "Wait till we come to power
with 277 seats! After that we will show you how it is done!". Up
until this point, I thought we had a civil debate, not an open
challenge by a party member with an agenda of immense implications.

According to M, the BJP condemns the influence of Western culture,
completely and unabashedly condones and even appreciates the goons who
attacked people at a pub in Mangalore, does not want nuclear power,
wants us to wait for all the rivers in India to be linked so we have
plenty of hydro electric power, wants to raise the Hindu population to
proportionately match the growth of the Muslim population, wants to
build the Ram temple on the same ground as the broken Babri Masjid,
wants to bring back a Rama Rajya where money has no place, and
abundance and justice abound.

According to M, all the problems in India are due to the influence of
other cultures, and because of Indians imitating the West. He asked
me if a Christian putting his wife on a bus in India would kiss her
before she boarded. I said, "Probably not", and to that he asked me
how a Christian in America did exactly that. I asked him what the
relevance of his question was to the topic, and he said, "See how our
Christian behaves differently from an American Christian?". I offered
silence as a way of passing over a blatantly stupid argument. It was,
thankfully, taken.

Then came a very strange accusation - that I was a traitor to the
Hindu religion because I was a Hindu and chose to remain single. The
argument was that I did not contribute to maintaining the sufficient
population of Hindus, while being overtaken by those of Muslims! I
told him that was my personal choice and had nothing to do with
religion in any case. He said there is no such thing as personal
freedom in these matters, and that I had to learn how to live in
accordance to the expectations of the community and the country!

Now, I had to sneak in the question - so, since he is so against a lot
of things Muslims do and stand for, wants to destroy one of the
monuments that represents that faith, and compete with their
population through more Hindu births, would it be okay to call him
communal, and since he was a BJP party member, by implication made the
BJP a communal party? He said he is definitely anti-Muslim, and the
party was interested in Hindutva - the best and the only solution for
all of India's problems.

So, I asked him about Hindutva, and strangely got no visionary
explanation, a clarification that would blow my mind away, and make me
more curious. I got a roundabout allusion to an idea that if we
rolled back time to the days of King Rama, we would have a great,
prosperous, advanced, healthy and proud nation. I was told about
Shushrutha, the magical Indian surgeon (that left behind no
documentation of his work), about giants of men who lived in this land
that were very strong and courageous, and how foreigners used tricks
to defeat us in unfair, unethical battles.

Somehow we drifted through a few topics in bad taste and landed on Mr.
M's visit to Mumbai, where he saw women in short skirts that would
make any man think wrong thoughts (I wonder if Sita was dressed in a
short skirt when Ravana stole her!). I had to remind him that there
was something called freedom, and quite nicely, a law against indecent
exposure as well. Then I had him - he wanted all women to dress
"decently" and behave "properly" in public. I had to voice my opinion
that no matter what, social change could never be externally enforced.
Quite astonishingly, he reminded me of Islamic societies where indeed
such laws were there and enforced quite a bit!

He also accused me of supporting anti-Indian causes and pointed out
how badly we did with "freedom of the press" during the 26th Nov
attacks in Mumbai. Barkha Dutt's incompetence really should be no
reason for us withdrawing her freedom, and I told him as much, what
with her being a Padma Shri and what not. He told me the Padma Shri
could be bought! Now, I wonder what kind of vision people like this
would bring to restore any kind of faith in anything at all that we
call Indian.

So, I had to ask him how the BJP thought nothing about bringing the
country to its knees when one of its airliners was hijacked, conceded
every inch of ground to terrorists, and released dangerous terrorists
who were in prison, and would come back to attack India later. His
answer was that the BJP did not have a majority government and that
things would be a lot different this time around.

To me, and from here on, these are just my opinions - there's no
difference between the Taliban and lunatics like M. There is no
difference between the party and its members. With members like this,
you cannot hope for a progressive party, modern thinking, or realistic
agendas. With the BJP, we're in for a Talibanisation of India.
Nothing less. (I can actually see how things will be different this
time around if these lunatics come to power!)

This thing called Hindutva is a concept that has some merit, but is
not a complete idea worth considering for any sort of implementation.
It most certainly has no place in my vision of India and it most
definitely invites my ire and scathing criticism when it okays the
destruction of national monuments in the name of religion and
correcting history. What kind of a retard has ever succeeded in doing
that, and to what avail? I really don't think the Babri Masjid is in
any way a shameful part of India's past, till it was broken by "RSS
Cadre". I think the Vidhana Soudha building in Bangalore, that
proclaims "Government work is God's work" is a shameful reminder of
our present sorry state of incompetence and corruption.

To me, a fort, a stable, a grinding stone and a place of worship from
historic times deserve equal respect as treasures from our past, and
if Germany can maintain its Nazi era concentration camp sites without
hanging its head in shame, there's absolutely no reason for any Indian
to feel threatened by a mosque that was supposedly built over a
destroyed temple. The entire story is part of the history of my land,
and the duty of our country to protect it. I see no difference
between the destruction of the Babri Masjid, and the destruction of
Buddhist monuments by the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Soon after the attack on the pub in Mangalore, Advani was quick enough
to accept that people should be free to go where they want, and
proceeded to distance himself from such despicable attacks on personal
freedoms. But his "cadre" is very much for such attacks. On the
ground, it won't be Shri Advaniji upholding the Indian Constitution.
It will very much be monkeys like M who will use every political sinew
to twist us into a rotten existence.

How dare he tell me that I could live in fear every Dec. 6th for the
sake of Hinduism? One day in a year, that's all, he tells me! I
would be pissed and fuming through my ears if some idiot tells me I
should live in fear for a heartbeat and I'll be damned if I give into
a party that subscribes to views like this.

I remember an afternoon in Bangalore when a group of people claiming
to be from the Indian Insitutute of Science came around asking for
donations to build the Ram Temple in Ayodhya. Why they could not say
they were devotees of Lord Rama instead of seeking some sort of a
refuge of respectability under the secular name of the "Indian"
Institute of Science, while supporting a clearly anti national act of
destruction in the name of religion? The Indian Taliban are
everywhere, but thank God, India hasn't given them a chance yet.

India was born on the 15th of August 1947, and anyone who thinks the
Constitution is a mere piece of paper is an ignorant fool, who doesn't
deserve any of the highest ideals India stands for. India may not be
anywhere near perfect in its collective standpoint, but that high
ground is grand enough and beautiful enough to deserve our complete
support as Indians.

It is already disgusting that your vote should be used not to select
amongst great parties. It is very disturbing that you should choose
to vote in order to prevent certain agendas from gaining mileage, but
the idea that is India is going through a process of clarification, of
definition, and it is coming to age on its own.

This idea should not be hijacked, sidetracked or ignored by any
political party. It should be nurtured and given its chance. There
are thousands of examples of it working, for every instance of it
coming unstuck. Those that do not subscribe to the vision of India as
a modern, diverse, vibrant, progressive collective may kindly find
their own country to Talibanise.

No humility, just controlled desperation!

Sambhavna Maini is an engineer from a prestigious institution. With
over fifteen years of international work experience, she still lost
her IT indutry job and could not find one even remotely close to the
one she had. So, she has decided that it is time to try her hand at
screenwriting. Not that it is an easy nut to crack, but worth the
gamble considering no job will pay her as much as she thinks her great
script sale will fetch! It is also the sort of gamble one can take
when there's still some money in the bank, which stupidity will allow
spending.

The global economic downturn has forced a lot of people to rethink
their lives, to use a cliched term. If they had put any "think" into
their lives in the first place, a "re-think" would not have been
called into play. The IT boom ran a lot of other businesses amok and
a lot of opportunists jumped on the bandwagon which has lost it wheels
now. So, those opportunists are busy turning their attention to other
professions and vocations they know nothing about, but are forced to
try before their tanks run dry.

A lot of jobless people are questioning where they have been
spiritually, and taking up yoga classes, doing social service, and a
variety of things, as they evaluate their lives. But, let's not
mistake this for being any sort of awakening. This is what people do
when their standard of living is suddenly under threat and they want
to continue feeling good about themselves. After all, it would take a
lot for an engineer to work in the retail sector, wouldn't it? So,
enter the "awakened" soul, trying to make it in an unfamiliar world,
while holding on to some semblance of dignity.

You saw what AIG employees did when they got a US government bailout
cheque. They threw a party for US$400,000. Were they being arrogant?
Of course not! They were just being as stupid as they were that led
to the bailout in the first place. The party was just to assure
themselves that their lives were returning to "normal". It isn't
bloody normal to pay anyone seven figures in dollars, no matter how
well any company performs in the collective, unless that individual is
Steven Spielberg. Dreamworks can sell a movie for several times
Spielberg's salary, based on his name alone. There aren't very many
names worth that much to their companies, and such frivolous
exaggerations of self worth should have been questioned a long time
ago.

Be suspicious, very suspicious, of anyone claiming right now to be
changing career paths, or discovering a side of theirs that they had
not explored. Especially so if they have been in the IT industry.
Here are a few more reasons they aren't going to make very good
employees. First of all, they have been overpaid and lazy for a long
time. Such habits are bound to stick on. IT isn't an industry where
a great deal of everyday skills are developed, for instance like those
of a guy selling tea bags. But more than anything, these people won't
get their hands dirty, and not many industries can provide an air
conditioned office, comfortable furniture, a nice salary, and a
computer as the only thing to operate, apart from catch words and the
phone.

I had predicted some time ago that there will be many broken
marriages, suicides and such. We've started seeing all of that come
true, especially among our "techies" living in the USA, in houses they
can no longer afford to pay mortgages for. Many have green cards, but
can't quite see themselves becoming pizza delivery drivers, for they
have become so used to the illusion of how good they are and how
deserving they were of all the luxury they bought for themselves with
credit given to them liberally by their banks in their heydays, which
they were going to repay over years yet to come. Those years are yet
to come, but no money!

There's only one thing more pathetic than an Indian guy getting cut
down to size - his wife coming home with the same experience! The
couple who just enjoyed a double income, two car, three bedroom luxury
home lifestyle with a maid and regular holidays suddenly cannot afford
their mortgage anymore. This reality is upon us, my dears! There
aren't very many Indian guys capable of heroic deeds to reach their
dreams. Indian women who leeched on to the men of the IT gold rush
would find it all the more easy to say, "Okay, I'm now going to focus
on raising the kids! Why don't you try to get another job?" It's all
about buying insulation from true feelings, and the Indian marriage
system is brilliant at it.

At the outer edge, there are people who have moved into tent cities in
the USA. I wonder how many Indians have thought of going into the
tent business! That would be something an entrepreneur would do, not
a protected Indian IT techie. The Americans will survive and come out
of it, because they're cool with being themselves. If it takes living
in a tent, they'd do it. But that's the part Indians have not learnt
from the Americans. We have no problem living in their country,
making money, and making fun of their "value systems"! We'd much
rather embrace the silliness of our illusions rather than the reality
of poverty.

Where's the embrace? Where's the love? India is the most unspiritual
place one can find. Indians are not spiritual people! We use
religious icons, rituals and quotes when we need to, but we are the
most cut throat material people in the world. So, this downturn comes
at the right time, indeed. Let's not mistake desperation for
humility. Let's enjoy the fun. For sheer incompetence and lack of
innovation, some of our techies simply have to go! Satyam, well done.