A Political Apathy & Actors Adorable

Alright, i won't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. Everybody may be a genius. But, i cannot agree everybody is a genius in whatever they do.
    I grew up apolitical as innumerable other boys from typical middle-class educated families in India. Apolitical, why? Because in my last 30 odd years of being, i have never seen a single political leader or a party -- who are good honest people with true moral standards and devoid of vested interests.
    And that's not even a farce in the largest democracy on planet earth called India, where millions choose their leaders out of people they don't like, don't trust and almost don't as well believe.
    The choices are never between good and bad. The choices are always between bad, worse and uglies. So, in the five-year cycles of election chariots, you choose whether you'll retain the bad for the next turn or, you'll try a dare by choosing the worse and await a sweet miracle.
    I'm from Calcutta. My state bears testimony to the fact that people sometimes really do that. But then, miracles don't happen as they're not supposed to.
 
    One may raise brows, as that's most of my coutrymen's favourite pastime, if i'm so apathetic towards politics, why am i doing this rant! It's my blog, right? So, i can babble whatever i want.
 
    What amazes me the most during India's elections is the bandwagon of movie 'stars', who get nomination tickets almost always on the basis of just their face values, and perhaps some public recalls of their reel-lives.
    Why do the political parties or their existing leaders think film-stars can win them elections?
    What credentials do these actors bring to override the full-time politicians to claim a ticket?
    Why don't the politicians have as much of a recall-value than these so called celebs?
    Do you need to be a good actor to be a  good politician?
    Why would the voters think actors are brilliant enough to be their representatives?
    Why do these stars shift to the polity sky when their shimmer dims in the cine-world?
 
    Easy questions, right?
    But, The Argumentative Indian in me believes the easiest of questions are the toughest to answer. So, if you're still here... Help me figure out.
 
    STAR POWER OF BATTLEGROUND 2019
 
    Sunny 'Tara Singh' Deol
    To fight for Gurdaspur, Punjab -- Team NaMo
    Claim to Fame: Son of Garam Dharam & is a bona fide Gadar
    Last Okayish Hit - The Hero: Love Story of a Spy (2003)
    Thirty odd movies and several family-relaunches later, he's gonna run to be be a minister!
    [PS: After joining the party, the 62-year old "young" man with a hand weighing 2.5 Kgs said #MeToo to his stepmom, who also wears the same party colour. Sunny Deol is being fielded in a seat that was once ruled by Lt Vinod Khanna and now, Mrs Khanna is only left with tears.]
 
    Urmila 'Rangeela' Matondkar
    To fight for North Mumbai, Maharashtra -- Team RaGa
    Claim to Fame: Lakdi Ki Kaathi, Metallic Lipgloss & is a bona fide Bhoot
    Last Okayish Hit: Ek Hasina Thi (2004)
    Fifteen years, a few reality shows and a Snicker ad later, she's gonna run to be be a minister!
    [PS: After joining the party, the 45-year old bombshell said "i've been a phenomenally good student" and her political ideology is more of a concoction of Gandhi-Nehru-Patel trinity. She also said RaGa would make a "phenomenal" Prime Minister. Ummm... I'm just wondering when did i last hear an actually bright pupil say i'm really very bright.]
 
    Nusrat Jahan Ruhi
    To fight for Basirhat, Bengal -- Team MaBa
    Claim to Fame: Link with Park Street Rape Case accused & is a bona fide Miss Kolkata
    Last Okayish Hit: Jamai 420 (2015)
    The accidental pretty face said "forget politics, I had never planned to become an actress in the first place. So basically, I am not someone who plans" and she's gonna represent people and their fancies.
    [PS: After joining the party, the ladylove for Khoka 420 said she has always done things to help people, in politics she'll do the same and would continue doing it irrespective of which profession she undertakes in the near future. What do you do as an actor to help people? Perhaps, Entertain? Ummm... So, gear up Basirhat to shake a lake with Rani Talapatra.]
 
    Mimi Pupey Chakraborty
    To fight for Jadavpur, Kolkata - Team MaBa
    Claim to Fame: Gaaner Opaare, relationship with Raju Choco & is a bona fide Shiv-bhakt
    Last Okayish Hit: Posto (2017)
    The thirty-year old football player, who joined politics 1-1/2 months before elections, said she's keen to straddle in a MaBa-like Goliath-slaying electoral career from the important constituency primarily riding on women's safety issues.
    [PS: After joining the party, the face of FFACE (Fame Fashion and Creative Excellence) said "i do all my chores myself as i live alone." That's a major feat indeed in a country like India, where no woman has ever dared to. The once-Rajkumari Durga for the 'Yoddha: The Warrior' is currently in the phase of Mon Jane Na and i'm wondering it's that's just a mere coincidence.]
 
    Then again, the list is just a handful. I really hope this Star Power will bring all the glimmer of hopes a nation such as India deserves and as we have seen in the past after voting for a constellation of stars including Hema Malini, Jayaprada, Satabdi Roy, MoonMoon Sen and others.
 

           
   
   

The Burnt Butterfly - Chapter V

life is living in a world of oxymorons
be it in the alluring activism of the unreasonable
or, be it in the impeccable insanity of the relentless

in a world, where sense and sensibilities
are well juxtaposed with ignorance and sheer arrogance
and pursuit of intellect follows nothing but the mindfulness
of cockfights in the cockpits of social media,
where you hail deaths of icons, you've never known when they were still breathing and you debate wrongdoings of seasoned minds with the pea-sized acuity shaped via quickipedia mug-ups,
where you almost shed a tear and scout for voices
for the disheartening dismays of the downtrodden
but, abrasively avoid to reach out a helping hand to one of your own
in a place outside the digital window

in a world, where freedom of expression underpins
the liberty to be lewd, and animates abusiveness not to be gawky
and profanity gives you the power to gain popularity,
when you can afford to stay unperturbed by the unconsciousness of conscience, you've long lost unknowingly but you feel content in
the follies of fanatic isms in the name of race, gender, or even the food you eat or the planet you dwell and walk in the daydreams of a contracting globe and feel unrightfully disallowed by dogmas of injustice and social institutions in the name of traditional values

in a world, where in-comprehensiveness and ignorance
is the purest form of flattery and bountiful bliss of
chasing random mirages that last a few months to get transgressed
to a new in the name of cranial gadgets, while you complain of
having missed out witnessing chapters that became history even before
you were born or will be coined important well after you're gone
and the prudence of politeness will keep getting battered as naivety
as long as the mindsets keep hailing shamelessness as smartness
and gaudy being the bringer of tantalizing shine 

life will still remain living in a world of daydreams
be it in the repugnant rejections of the reasonable

or, be it in the alarming aversions of the momentary gaiety

(Image Courtesy - Garry Gay & Google Images)

Prodigal 'Pappu's' Populist Promise Prods Paupers; Punitive Plausibility Percolates

"We have decided that every poor person in India would be guaranteed a minimum income after the Congress forms the government in 2019... No one will go hungry in India, no one will remain poor." - Rahul Gandhi
 
    That is The Scion's verbatim at a farmers rally in the central state of Chhattisgarh on Monday, Jan. 28, 2019.
    That is three days before the existing government's interim budget presentation; three months before the country goes to polls.
 
    The proposal would apparently eliminate poverty and could be executed via navigating funds currently spent on subsidy programmes that most often do not reach the poor.
    Who are this poor? The people living on less than Rs. 32 a day in rural areas and Rs. 47 a day in urban areas? Just them?
    What about those, who keep skipping lunches to save money to send their wards to a better school?
    What about those, who work odd hours at the expense of own health to provide better medication for ailing kin?
    What about those, who stay away from the tiniest of luxuries to dream for an own shelter?
 
    They are not poor. They are not poor because they earn more than what some diplomats defined to be called poor. Then again, it's subjective, right?
    Some people just choose to be poor. Foolish people with a handful of aspirations, ambitions and agonizingly astonishing dreams. They have a generic name too. They're called the Middle Class monkeys.
    They chatter, they grumble, they desire, they dissent. Then they go and cast their votes for someone who's not good, but just not as bad as the others available at disposal.
    And alongside the other truths of life, would carry on accepting their designated fates in the name of taxes that help build their country for the better.
    They'll pay a considerable part of their hard-earned salary in income taxes.
    They'll pay a sizable part of their earnings in service taxes in health centers, banking and financial institutions, and restaurants.

    They'll pay a substantial part of their income in value added taxes on each and every product they buy.
    And now, they'll pay some more of it to ensure no one is poor in the country.
    The problem is that the lower rung of the economic ladder in the country doesn't quite aim and the upper rung of the ladder doesn't quite bother. Well, almost always.
    So every time it comes back biting the ones who are caught in the middle -- the ones, not poor enough to expect or rich enough to expunge expectations.
    Thus far, that's the emotional rant of just another caught hanging in the middle.
 
    Now, let's greet a few numbers that underpin facts.
    Soon after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party took a beating in some state polls early December, Mr. Rahul Gandhi announced a nationwide waiver of farm loans to appease farmers -- a crucial vote-bank as half of the nation's workforce still depends on agriculture.
    Now, Edelweiss thinks this could cost up to 3 trillion rupees, which is equivalent to 1.4 percent of India's GDP.
    For the third-largest economy in the Asian continent, which is trying hard to bring down deficit to a planned 3.1 percent by March 2020, generosity is nothing but a far-flung caricature.
    Market watchers believe more than half of last year's capital expenditure, or about 2.5 percent of GDP, was funded through state-owned companies in everything from power to railways. And, a more pragmatic estimate of the true fiscal deficit in current financial year is closer to 4.2 percent.
    So in order to ensure whatever "minimum income" again some diplomats juggle up for the real poor, who'll come to rescue? If the motherland is not in such a good shape to be the provider of all sorts, where will the funds come from?
    They'll come from the most dependable tax payers, who belong to the middle and can't escape like the ones on top, who still has an option to fly away and nest elsewhere on the globe.
    The ones at the bottom can't make noises anyway as they're the ones apparently to benefit from this propaganda pledge punting a pocketful of pennies.
 
    While this appears really hunky-dory in assuming that this might be a game-changer and make happiness shine for the poor, this is not something like a Universal Basic Income, where everyone is entitled to get a fixed income from the government. One needs to understand that.
 
    It's money -- it's coming via politicos -- and, it's India.
    Aren't we smart enough to decode this? Easy-peasy, right?

    Even if we assume for a moment the Congress with its utmost degree of honesty attempts to eradicate poverty as it's promising now, there would be an infinite number of roadblocks and potholes to implement a scheme such as this in such a complex country.
 
    The existing Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) is also meant to serve similar ideas -- helping the needy with at least 100 days of guaranteed jobs, thus guaranteed income.
    But, did it work? Did it benefit the poor? There are innumerable documented cases across the country, where MNREGA workers never got their wages even after working, while others never got to work, and some eligible others had to pay middlemen first to ensure they get their names called for those government-assured jobs.
    Economics suggest, in a widely-agricultural rural India, where farmers get battered by operational holdings with 30 peasants farming a plot of land ideally meant for about 3, how do you evaluate who's poor in the first place!
    Anyway welfare schemes are always meant to brew corruption somewhere inside the pipeline. And then, delinquency might as well come from the recipients. Doesn't a guaranteed minimum income reduce the incentive to work? Then just in a world of vote-bank politics, there will be generations of poor families living on welfare with no intentions of coming out of it. And, a RaGa saga would continue for some years and we'll get another Bharat Ratna with the fans and followers touting like-father-like-son.
 
    So the newly-induced war-cry from the opposition, which has been trying to herd up lately to oust the existing regime, is more of a blistering bullshit than a harbinger of happiness.
    But then, critics might argue, I'm perpetually pessimistic and it's actually Baby Gandhi's one endearing endeavor to bring holistic happiness to crybaby countrymen.

[Image Courtesy - Cartoonist Satish Acharya from Google Images]

Temple Tango & Political Pandemonium -- Just Not Worth It

There are women who silently steer seminal civil rights movements, there are women who fight against society and its norms for education and upliftment, there are women who constantly lead from the front to nurture a balanced workplace environment, and then there are women who get famous for sneaking in a house.
    House. Yes. In this case, one, where a God resides. Certainly, the women who defied a customary ban to enter a temple has got nothing to do with religious practices or offerings to a faith. They just used a religious shrine for a political podium to get famous.
    And, what was the cost of these two ladies getting famous? Sufferings of common people -- belonging to all kinds of faiths, who never signed up to partake in any political propaganda.
    Small businesses were forced to remain shut, taxi drivers halted services at the fear of being attacked while public transports were damaged, and schools were closed as protests paralyzed a particular Indian state.
    No. This can't be the collateral damage for 'renaissance' in a state, where the ruling governance suggests not being in line with the nation's choice of rulers collated in terms of religious inclinations. To put it simply, Kerala had chosen Left Democratic Front, while India elected a Hindu-nationalist party.
    The very basic context of Sabarimala is not equality of rights, or right to religion, but only and only political.
    Let's take a step back and try reasoning it why of all things, this is anything but religious.
    The very premise of Ayappa and the ban on menstruating women entering his temple is that he's a sworn celibate. And, the polytheistic religion that Hindusim is, allows to associate humane qualities to gods and goddesses as irrespective of geographies across the country, they are worshipped not just as a mother but also as a daughter, or, not just as a father but also as a son.
    In the way-of-life, where you practice your god to be as human as yourself, does necessarily leave the scope of the vices of man even in the deity. That's the crude spiritual way of deciphering why women were not allowed to enter a shrine that houses a celibate young male god.
    Even more interesting is the fact that Ayappa is a syncretic deity, which nurtures a confluence of different tributaries of faith in the names of Shaivism, Shaktism and Vaishnavism. He is even honored by some Muslims in Kerala, thanks to legends and folklores.
    The Sabarimala temple is located within a present-day tiger reserve and if Ayappan iconography is to be resorted, the god's representation depicts him riding tigers. Even a very pragmatic assessment of the association with the carnivore would rest arguments that the fierce animals walked the place.
    So, the sensible reasoning from a societal approach on the ban disallowing women to take a strenuous and dangerous pilgrimage was perhaps, to protect them.
    Yes, of course, what's the need for that now? Women can protect themselves well enough and the temple is no longer inaccessible. But then, we're dealing with a vowed celibate male here. And, there's a reason why the primal part of any Hindu temple complex is called sanctum sanctorum, where sanctity, rituals and beliefs take precedence over whims of desire and motif-driven advocacy.
    If it was about gender equality in access for religious offerings, tradition would have stood guard. But, it was never about that. It was just to prove a point, which itself had no point in the first place.
    The moment it had to adopt a guerilla hide-and-seek tactic, feminism took a hit in the foot. The fact the activists acknowledged this couldn't have been done in broad daylight, or, without police protection defeated the case and belittled the movement if at all there was any. Again, it was never a religious cause. It was just another agenda for some to grab limelight and become famous overnight.
    Have we ever given it a thought, why it has to be Sabarimala in Kerala for all the outrage? Why not Shani Shingnapur in Maharashtra or, Patbausi Satra in Assam?
    If we're talking about gender equality and equal accessibility to worship, why are we talking in splinters? It should be generic and collective for everyone. Let's allow all men to enter each and every temple, where traditions and practices  disallow entry to them. Why is it difficult for some women to admit the diversity in beliefs and abide by the customs that come along with them? Because, they don't know what they want. Rather, why they want!
    The vast stretch of land that India is houses a host of temples, where men are not allowed to enter. Let's take for instance the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple, which not so surprisingly, is also in Kerala. The temple, dedicated for worshipping a form of the Mother Goddess, made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the single largest gathering of women for a religious activity, where men were not allowed to participate.
    Another such example would be Kanya Kumari, as the name  suggests in vernacular, belongs to a young female goddess who turned ascetic and hence, men are prohibited there as well.
    In the temples of the Bhagwathi in Chengannur (also in modern-day Kerala) and Kamakhya (Assam), divinity marries a very basic human trait. The presiding deities in both the temples, who are goddesses, are believed to menstruate and follow socially-imposed practices of menstrual seclusion and the temples remain shut. But, every time they re-open, there are celebrations in the name of rituals.
    In a religion, which considers women as Prakriti or the nourishing mother, champions health and fertility in the form of voluptuous depictions of female deities, follows rituals to celebrate the moments of girls attaining puberty, cannot be just as shallow to not let women enter a particular temple for being women.
    The problem is traditions begin on rational and moral grounds, but the rhyme or reason dies with time, leaving only preaches and practices. And in most cases, what remains is misrepresentations and misinterpretations.
    It's evidently a memory game, where the one who remembers, wins. But all those who lose, define majority.
    And those who are at fault, always need unwarranted distractions and baseless deliberations. It's just as perennial as the woes and frowns of common people, and smiles and pity on the faces of gods.
 
   

The Burnt Butterfly - Chapter IV

in the entwined tingles of our seemingly messed up lives, if someone somewhere misses you even for a moment, you need to live.
in the unnecessary complexities of our otherwise mundane lives, if someone somewhere craves to be with you just for a moment, you need to live.

amidst the damp polluted abattoir-stenched air around us, if someone somewhere remembers the smell on your neck, you need to exist.
amidst the plausible deniability of lustful bonds that grasps us everyday, if someone somewhere wishes just to be in your arms, you need to exist.

in the falsities of promises,
in the farcical attachments,
in the fantasies of promiscuity,
in the fallacies of compromises,

if someone somewhere just lives
to get a glance of you,
to hold you in a whisper
to get a touch of you,
to hug you in a whimper,

you need to believe in love...

Friendship And Iceberg

When your paychecks determine whom you can hang out with; When your bank-balance decides whom you can vacation with; When the size of your dwelling dictates who comes over; When the number of brands in your closet governs your reach --

You may get to greet
a lot of smiling lips
yet no truly happy eyes

You may get to meet
a lot of sociable beings
yet no true friends...

When your social circle tends to judge you by the size of your TV-set; When they choose to forget to call you thinking about your incapacity to afford an expensive dinner; When your companions heil achievements on monetary thresholds; When they secretly discuss your obligations --

You need to flip
the happy faces that surround
and lie incessantly that you belong

You need to slip
the shoulders that show they care
and sigh you're a burden to hold...



FRIENDS don't judge you on anything
FRIENDS don't ever think you lack
FRIENDS fight with you for not sharing something
FRIENDS always disapprove you slack.

The Burnt Butterfly - Chapter III

With every new sun
    conscience grows sour,
    empathy turns back in its sleep
    and, compassion dies in another sacrifice.

With every new hour
    innocence turns deaf,
    sense of rightousness winks a deceit
    and, morality drowns in another felony.


With every new moment, fades the one born right before
And the mortals complain of a dying humanity!
With every desire fulfilled, bubbles a fresh new greed
And time mocks itself; that the end is a process...