The Sunday Read

Summer is at its peak. Sun is at its torturing worst. Day passes in an AC office cabin. Nights in deep sleep but then come the horrible mornings with no electricity. It is really frustrating. Week ends are even more frustrating with nothing to do. IPL has come to my rescue to save me from the boredom.

STOI is a great companion on Sundays. This Sunday I wake up to the reports of Raj Thackeray's Shivaji Park rally which, as usual, drew the media attention that it needed. Now, there is something about this man, Raj, which makes me think. He asks some uncomfortable questions, makes some boisterous statements, ridicules his opponents in an uncivilised manner and tries to imitate the Big Thackeray. In the end he makes me think.

Warning: You may find this piece of writing as a jingoists rambling but I fiercely deny to be one.

As the TOI report said Raj trained his guns again on Bhaiyyas, dared the state government to arrest him, poked fun at his usual targets Amar Singh, Lalu and Abu Azmi. Then moved on to show how Big B prefers UP over Maharashtra.

Now if you can sense something from his speeches, he is carefully giving a way out to a long standing fears of Maharashtrians of Mumbai. ( The manner in which he is doing it, is questionable, though) The fear of losing control over city's affairs, the fear of Marathi culture being rooted out, the fear of being ruled by "others". These fears have been there for long. Shivsena attempted to allay these fears in earlier times. But it changed course as the time progressed. Now the time has come when the situation in Mumbai is such that if you are a Marathi, you will give a second thought on what you see around yourself. The big rallies held by North Indians, the increasing number of theatres showing Bhojpuri movies and the same time Marathi movies not getting place for screening, the local media attention given to the likes of Amar Singh, Abu Azmi, the huge celebrations of UP Divas and Chath Pooja, etc.

Now it doesn't require a Raj Thackeray to sense what is coming... One example will clear things. BMC has 27 North Indian Corporators out of total strengh of 227. Now when these 27 demand the proceedings of BMC should be strictly in Hindi then there is something wrong this. Such demand defeat the essence of States being made on linguistic basis.Now a common-man Bhaiyya has nothing to do with this. He is happy to work hard and live in peace. But the vote bank politics being played by their leaders gives birth to the Raj Thackerays. In this process ultimately who suffers is the poor taxi driver or the hapless vegetable vendor. Beating up Taxi men is not the solution. I will keep this thing aside in this post.

I, personally, will be more than happy to be ruled by Shivsena or Raj Thackeray rather than some UP wallahs. Not because they are from UP but because they have proven track record of destroying what was good and taking the system to new lows.

Let us come to what has been on my mind most, the Hindi news channels. They are inherently biased when they report anything about Raj. These channels bring in North Indian Netas who start giving lectures about Human Rights, Constitutional rights and they advise Maharshtrian public not to elect people like Raj. I question their credibility. These men have turned UP, Bihar into living hells and they are trying to teach others whom to vote and whom not to. They are the root cause of the problem Had the situation in UP, Bihar not been so bad, the problem of outsiders in Mumbai won't exist.

There were few questions like why the % of Biharis in Railways has been on the rise for last 7-8 years, why Rail Budget gives Mumbai/Maharashtra a pittance as compared to Bihar, why suddenly in Mumbai Chath Pooja is being celebrated on such a large extent, why similar statements by South Indian leaders don't come under the scanner,etc. These are uncomfortable questions. Nobody answers these questions and this makes a common Marathi like me to think a little deeper about the issue. These questions are the ones about which a common Marathi Manus is concerned. It is just that Raj Thackeray has grabbed the opportunity to voice these concerns. His methods should be rejected in their entirety but until one finds saitsfactory answers to above questions I fear that Raj will be successful in his tactics, needless to say, which is not good for the idea of Republic of India.

Meanwhile The Great Khali is back (with his sexy wife). You can catch him 24 * 7 on AAJ TAK, Star News, India TV,etc. :-)) IPL is inching towards becoming a bore phenomenon with the exit of Aussies. Let's see. Hope you will have a cool week ahead. N yes Comments will be appreciated!!!

A Half an Hour and Some Questions

The day gone by was 14th April. There must have been scores of bloggers, essentially from higher stratas of our society, thinking, writing, talking about one Man who, they think, made their life miserable. Yes, you guessed it right. I am talking about Ambedkar Jayanti and the rituals asscociated with it. I must warn you that this is not commentory on his towering personality. I am too small a person to do that. This is just what I saw during an half hour journey from office to Hostel and which made my now-a-days-less-utilized brain to ponder upon some quetions.

So here it goes... I was driving my way back to Hostel from office, Traffic wale mama se bachte, struggling to find my way out through Mumbai's snarling traffic. Generally I don't think while I drive. This helps me not to miss any interesting two-legged creature which comes across. But it was a special day today. One thing that I noticed on the usually overcrowded Andheri-Seepz Road was the big Hoardings displaying typical folded-hands cut-outs of Soniaji (as every "loyal" Congressman would love to address her) and our-own Vilasrao. I think there was some function which was to be attended by these two. These are very familiar scenes to any Indian. But this time the difference was there was a middle sized portrait of Ambedkar also. Ah.. I got it..It is 14th April and Sonia and Vilasrao were "saluting" this great soul. Nothing wrong in that. As my bike made slow progress, I saw there were atleast hundread of such kind posters on a stretch of hardly 1-1.5 Kms. I did a quick calculation: Rs 500 per poster multiplied by 100 posters makes Rs 50000. There are hundreads of such streets in Mumbai. If we do the calcualtion for Mumbai alone, forget entire India, I think this amount will suffice for many a Dalit childern to complete their often-talked-about primary education. They are the same children before whose parents these Netas profess their committment to Ambedkarian Values. Why don't we understand this or Have we surrendered to the system which was essentially created by us only? God only knows the answer.

Just on the next turn, on Jogeshwari Vikroli link road, every big politician was lined up to pay their tributes to Babsaheb. From Mayawati to Ramdas Athawale, from Sharad Pawar to Uddhav Thackeray, From Raj Thackeray to Abu Azmi !!! What a joke!!! All bloody vote bank politics, commented my friend who was with me and who generally is not interested in politics. This is the state of our so called mature and world's largest democracy. Which once looked like a beautiful dream coming true, why it has turned into a hard-to-digest reality?

You might think I am being cynical. If you do then you are not wrong. Things are becoming worse. Just to give an example, the same Judiciary which gave the landmark verdict on Quota is reluctant to make it mandatory for the judges to disclose their assets and we say they are the last hope. Who is gonna bring our country out of this shit?? This thought worries me but at the same time it is my favourite pastime while I travel alone.

Having successfully dodged 2-3 pulice-mamas , we reached to our regularly-visited Vada-Pav ki Dukaan. The noise of loudspeakers was too much. It was playing the Ambedkari songs that we Maharashtrians are accustomed to. On every 14th April, the Maharashtrian Buddhist and Ambedkarian make it a point to play these songs in a volume that could easily irritate anybody. I do understand the rational behind this. But then every community in India follows the same path. Muslims want everybody to listen to their Azaans, Hindus want everybody to sing their Ganesh Aartis and den Dalits. Why do we try to assert our identity and that too in this ridiculous way? It only gives some vote-snatching techniques to vote-hungry politicos. Thats why we have every politician wishing us Happy Diwali, Eid Mubarak and Merry Christmas which turn our already ugly roads uglier.

And here I entered the calm, serene premises of NITIE which immediately made me forget, for a moment, what were going on outside and that's the beauty of this campus. But neverthless, that half-an-hour stretch was really a thought provoking one. It raised a hell lot of questions in my mind. Answers to these are the things which I will look for in the future.