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Being a Pensioner

My pension is a princely sum of Rs 1812. Having completed 35 years of teaching, I retire with that monthly pension. Someone had warned me not to count on the pension at all as the amount won’t be enough even to meet one’s most basic requirements. But I had not imagined the amount to be as beggarly as what landed in my bank account on the first working day of this month. My first impulse was to laugh as I stared at the phone message: “Your A/C [number] has credit for BY SALARY of Rs 1812…” [sic]. I thought it was some mistake. When I found out that it was the monthly pension granted to me by my magnanimous government which is Sabka Saath for Sabka Vikas, my laughter became boisterous enough to draw Maggie’s attention. “What’s the joke?” She asked. She was not quite chuffed with our government’s largesse. “Be a true patriot and chant three cheers for our Minimum Government, Maximum Governance,” I advised her. “We are children of lesser gods,” I philosophised with a grin that woul

Yogi’s UP is not my kinda place

  Read the report from DNA A gang in Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh has put out a rate chart. Just 5000 rupees for thrashing your rival and a mere 55,000 for killing him. Dirt cheap, I should say. I certainly wouldn’t like to be killed for such a low sum. Even dogs are priced higher in other places. However, we don’t need be surprised. In Yogi’s UP anything is possible. It is the crime centre of the human world. In 2019, UP accounted for nearly 15% of all registered crimes against women in India. That percentage may not give you a clear idea. Look at the actual figure: 59853 registered crimes against women. That is an astounding figure of 164 per day. Every ten minutes a woman is attacked in that state. That is by the records. Unofficially the number is much higher. Not even half the cases are registered in that state where the police are greater criminals than the goons who sell their services rather too cheap. If a woman goes to complain, she will end up being gangraped in the p

The Unwomanly Face of War

  Book Review Title: The Unwomanly Face of War Author: Svetlana Alexievich Published originally in Russian: 1985 Published in English: Penguin, 2017 Translated by Richard Pevear & Larissa Volokhonsky War is a subhuman enterprise. It makes brutes of men. What about women? How does war affect women-soldiers? Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich’s book answers that question eloquently. About a million Russian women fought in the World War II and the author of this book met a few hundred of those women in person. This book is narrated by them, in fact. Many of the women who speak though this book were just teenage girls when they joined the forces enthusiastically. “We were a cheerful cargo,” says one who was a sniper. She is speaking about her first journey along with other girls to join the forces. “Cocky. Full of jokes. I remember laughing a lot.” She and her friends were happy to fight for their nation. They wanted to be at the front. “Everybody was fighting,” she sa

For a better world

  You can kill a mad dog, but you shouldn’t kill an innocent songbird. Morality isn’t a set of absolute do’s and don’ts. Genuine morality is the goodness of your heart. That goodness is more often than not a product of right upbringing. Atticus Finch of Harper Lee’s celebrated novel, To Kill a Mockingbird , is an ideal father who brings up his two children teaching them the most essential lessons of human life. Scout and Jem are innocent at the beginning of the story. They will, and have to, lose their innocence as the plot develops. Yet they will retain their human goodness because their father has given them the right education. Most human beings carry in their hearts a lot of prejudice and ignorance, hate and hypocrisy. That’s why the world is such a foul place where innocent songbirds get killed for no reason and mad dogs rule the roost. You can and should keep your conscience clean if you want to add to the little goodness that remains in humankind. “The one thing that doesn

Some jokers

Nah, it isn’t at all as you say. You taught me that honesty is the best policy and truth will prevail in the end. But at the age of 60, I know much better. I have seen crooks and frauds climbing higher and higher on the rungs of sheer dishonesty and ruthless manipulation. You know what: you can kill a few thousand people and yet appear like a saint or even a god-incarnate provided you have an efficient PRO. Life’s as simple as that: a good PRO. You don’t even have to have any public relationships. Your office will do all that. You need other skills and you know what they are; they have nothing to do with all those great values and principles you corrupted me with in the name of god and other nonsense. Gods are the best jokes. They claim to love and then get millions killed. They literally suck, man. I think more crimes are committed in their names than for anything else. Look at the representatives of gods around us: yogis, sadhvis, bishops and cardinals, mullas and maulavis… If th

My Romantic God

  When I was a kid I was taught that God was a mystery. God’s mysteriousness was the ultimate answer to all questions which had otherwise no sensible answers. Why did God create the graceful deer and at the same time the murderous tiger? Answer: God’s ways are inscrutable, boy. I grew up and found it impossible to accept that answer. Like William Blake, I was buffeted time and again by the question whether the same god created both the tiger and the lamb. “What immortal hand or eye / Could frame (the tiger’s) fearful symmetry?” “Did he who made the Lamb make thee?” The poet sees God in the lamb too. “He (God) is called by thy name,” the poet tells the lamb. “He is meek and he is mild.” Who is the real god now? The fearful symmetry of the tiger or the gentle meekness of the lamb: which is the real face of god? Are the terrorists who keep killing ordinary people in the name of certain gods the real men of god? Is the boy who chopped off the head of his teacher for the sake of a

Between us and reality

  Image from India Today “Between us and reality are our feelings .” Svetlana Alexievich We won’t want to remember Phulmoni Dasi. She was a little girl of 10 when she was married to 30-year-old Hari Mohan Maiti. She died in the night of her marriage as her husband attained the bliss of orgasm which is a man’s right and privilege according to our great custom and tradition. Our glorified ancient culture which insisted that the wife’s virginity should be proved in the “first night” itself. The blood of her broken hymen should stain the bedsheet. But the British government in India at that time did not accept that as any greatness. Hari Mohan was charged with “causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others” and was sentenced to 12 months of hard labour. Within 6 months of that incident, on 9 Jan 1891, the Viceroy of India, Lord Lansdowne presented a bill before the Council of India seeking to amend a relevant section of the Indian Penal Code. Consequently,