..yours randomly!

I've been thinking about this whole debate going on in social media which has my atheist n liberal friends at each others throats. The whole question of------ Whether Islam is a religion of peace or a religion of violence?  I've come to the conclusion that both sides are wrong in this debate. No religion in itself can be called either peaceful OR violent. Its true that Islam and Christianity are young proselytising religions..ie conversions of infidels are not only allowed but encouraged, thus leading to more wars in their names n forceful conversions. But older religions like Judaism and Hinduism dont convert and they've wrecked untold horrors too...Hinduism through caste system on dalits and Judaism through zionism. ( i suspect the caste system would take the crown in terms of sheers numbers it destroyed). To this one side will loudly exclaim that 'but there are verses in the Koran which prompt the believers to kill infidels'; while the supporters of Islam...

Every once in a while along comes a book which will completely turn your world upside down. For an ordinary Indian, this is one such book. The author, a long time reporter, gives a vivid and horrifying account of the fake encounter 'industry' which has cropped in the army in all the conflict areas of india, specially in North East. For promotion, for money, for bosses, for smuggling, for awards....Indian citizens (and poor immigrants) are being murdered most ingloriously by members of one of the most revered institutions in India: The Army!  For most Indians this is the most horrible shock, incl for ppl like me who come from army families. We grew up with images of duty, sacrifice, patriotism...not murder. Most of the book is a confessional: an anonymous army officer who confesses the army's 'illegal business' to the journalist: cases, units, dates, motives. Many books have been written on fake encounters, but its an ode to Bhattacharjee's excelle...

This article was first published in Indiaresists.com  at following link  http://www.indiaresists.com/indias-adventures-in-wonderland/   But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked. “Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.” “How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice. “You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll) Haruki Murakami, the very popular Japanese novelist in his curious book IQ84 talks of a parallel world to ours where one can slip into without knowing.Strange and improbable things happened in the unreal world which had 2 moons. And the only way to figure out whether you were in the real world or the parallel world was the see the sky and see whether there were one moon or two. During the past few weeks, I’ve often had the urge to peer up at the sky convinced that I would see two moons instead of one. Because what’s...

(This article was first published on https://thewomaninc.com  ) ON MURTHAL By Meha Khanduri This article nearly never got written because as I start to write on the issue I start seeing red. When India was raptly watching students of a prestigious university go through a long drama of whether slogan shouting students had committed sedition or not…rampaging mobs were burning, looting, and ransacking the cities of Haryana, right next door to the capital Delhi. Nobody was really outraged, no resignations were called for, no charges of sedition were made and after nearly two days of looting and burning worth 34000 crores, the government cordially accepted the demands of the rampaging mobs and the burning and looting came to an end.  An amicable solution all around..except for criminality and couple of thousand crores of national property but …..this is India! Four days later some ghost stories started floating around. The whispers said that not only Haryana’s cities ha...

Of Pests And Genocides:  Anupam Kher and a tweet that is wrong on all levels by Meha Khanduri To my horror, I learnt a few days back, that Anupam Kher, the respected Bollywood actor, 2016 Padma Bhushan awardee, and whose profile says he is the 'UN Women champion of Gender Equality", tweeted this on 20 February in Hindi:  "Gharon mein pest control hota hai to cockroach, keede makode etyadi bahar nikalte hain. Ghar saaf hota hai. Waise hi aajkal desh ka pest control chal raha hai" (When pest control is done in the house, then cockroaches, insects etc come out. The house becomes clean. Similarly, these days the country is undergoing pest control.) To say that I am shocked is an understatement. I only hope fervently, that the actor who has in the past lashed out against academics and writers, doesn't know the historical context of the word 'pest' /cockroaches/vermin being used consistently during genocides. It is also unclear to me whether he was...

There is a bond between readers which transcends time and space...the bond of shared imagination. Rohith liked Carl Sagan, nature and stars. So do I. He dreamt of going to different planets. As did I. I spent nights watching stars in the isolation of natures, dreaming of civilisations inside those stars and when humankind would reach them. And perhaps he did too. I read every science fiction book I could, I was the one of the crew in Rama, i was the one who discovered the alien presence in Contact. Perhaps when I was dreaming of stars so was Rohith.  Except that from science fiction, I returned into my upper caste world of privilege, and he returned to his (i assume) small house in a small village supporting his family. Dreaming of distant lands, I went to a ivy league university in New York; while he worked towards a scientific phd in the urban metro of Hyderabad, trying to support his family and perhaps congratulating himself on arriving at a casteless world. However he so...

(This article was first published on IndiaResists.com at following link  http://www.indiaresists.com/the-still-glowing-embers-of-dadri ) The still glowing embers  of Dadri Meha Khanduri Some right wing politicians and their supporters have expressed their astonishment at the long shelf life of the Dadri lynching, pointing the blame at the Indian media. What they mean is that in a country where life is cheap and heinous crimes take place every minute, continuous public chatter about Dadri has to mean that the small incident is being blown out of proportion by an opportune greedy media. However, for once I don’t think the media is to blame; they are merely reflecting the real horror being felt in Indian society and international circles.  Every nation has such incidents which manage to shake up the collective conscience of its people, regardless of their size. One such was when Rosa Parks refused to sit at the back of a bus, signifying the collective humil...

(An edited version of this article was published in The Lucknow Tribune.) On the road towards Muzzafarnagar, my eyes somehow expect to see desolation associated with the name in recent times, but the cheery road flanked by the green sugarcane fields could be straight out of a Karan Johar film. Small shops, dusty roads, the local mithai shop with colorful character next to us eating an entire plateful of ladoos. Finally, we reach our destination… a field in the middle of nowhere. A simple board “rahat shivir-Jolla” takes us into enter the typical IDP (internally displaced people) camp: tents from Oxfam, women sitting outside in the sun, outdoors kitchens. Except it is not a relief camp; it doesn’t exist officially; the state govt claims that there are no refugees and everyone has returned to their homes. So the nearabout 150 families living here don’t exist in official records and the camp is run by charities and NGOs who give them food and shelter. As soon as we enter, we are ...

Delhi: The only city in the world where people boast of other people's money. :D..in the last couple of months of staying here, I've noticed, s typical conversation runs like this: "Driver: this is the kothi(mansion) of millionaire XYZ. I know them well. They are spending 15 crores in their daughter's wedding. Me: Ah! (surprisedly) Old aunty: I dont know what my old neighbor's son is doing but he's making billions. Probably a smuggler. They've become v big.They love me like family, thought they don't meet me any more. me: Oh! (weakly) Me: So can I find traditional food of the city in the old delhi area? Stylish lady: I don't know. my friends only go to 5 star hotels. Me: Ah! (bemusedly) Substitute connections to the powerful, instead of millions and billions..and you've covered the entire gamut of conversation of Delhiities. SIGH!!! (obviously all delhi is not like that..but enough to pander to the stereotype. :)

(Blogging about some of my interesting experiences during my India trip this year...) 1. Gharonda: The Nest In India, poverty is so ubiquitous that it becomes invisible. What catches the eye is the new wealth: the dazzling malls, the exclusive brands and the middle class Indian’s ability to spend more money than their parents could ever dream of. A recurring encounter with poverty comes in the form of street children who descend like locusts at each traffic signal. With their skeletal bodies dressed in rags they beg and beg with hollow eyes for money or sell flowers and magazines. After a few initial encounters, they too become a part of the unseen. One of the most impressive people I met in India was a rosy cheeked, smiling young woman in my hometown Lucknow! We found out that we’d even gone to the same school, Loreto Lucknow, though she was a couple of years behind me. A young mother herself, Shachi runs an NGO called Ehsaas, which rehabilitates such street children. ...

The age of social networking via the internet has created deep social dilemmas. Till now, whenever you disliked a person, all you had to do was to pretend they didn't exist / avoid talking if thrown together / or in the worst case scenario exchange vague pleasantries and depart with an insincere "lovely-meeting-you". You congratulated yourself on passing the litmus test from your mom's manner book combined with a pleasant feeling of relief at not having to meet for another decade or four. The other party was oblivious that you'd been slinking into dark corners and jumping off bridges rather than meet them (or so you thought) ...and all was well with the world. But now there is Facebook and anybody can send you a friend request! And the thought of having them on your friend list getting minute to minute details of your fascinating life--(meha...is eating chips while listening to U2) the quizzes you take ('what kind of vegetable are you?') and your pr...

I got my SO a pup for Valentine day. And now my life has become a misery. I have to point out that I was honest from the start. I told SO that I love dogs but am grossed out by poop picking. So the deal was that he will do the poop picking while i do the grooming, cuddling, loving, food-giving aunt bit. Though SO has pitched in to do the poop picking it's me who has been driven nuts. In the 5 days since she's been with us --she has bitten, scratched, chewed and peed inside. (though never pooped inside..coz of course that would make life difficult for SO whose job it is). She wails and barks when put inside her crate; eats and pees when put out of the crate; and has dug a hole in the neighbour's compost pile when I take her outside to play. My vocabulary has become limited to "No Bessie!" and my neighbours see me day in and day out as a wild eyed harridan with hair sticking out (she loves to chew my hair), dressed in a mangy coat and chewed up slippers (she lo...

Twit: - Slang- A foolishly annoying person. (Definition free online dictionary) For months I ignored the hype around Twitter. But I'm a sucker for enticing looking boxy spaces which ask me confidential questions. So when the box at the Twitter website cooed like a particularly pleasant dove and invited me to confide in 140 characters: "what are you doing?"... I gave in. And wrote my first tweet: - "Should twitter users be called twits?" "101"--replied the box. (FYI -"101 means the number of characters left.) I thought my first tweet with its clever pun on the word 'twit’ was great but the rest of the Twitterati decided otherwise. It ignored me. Now if it had been FB or OS I'd have posted a dictionary definition of the word 'twit' as slang (as I have above :) but really there are not many definitions you can write in 140 characters. I thought of writing another tweet explaining the definition of 'twit' and the pun on '...

This India trip was a series of arguments. I felt like a inept solitary ninja wielding my sword against a huge group of fighters closing in on me. The arguments centered around whether the Muslims in India are radicals/terrorists and what should be their fate. Indians i met, (read middle class educated Hindus) are convinced that all Indian Muslims are jihadis or on their way to become one! Most of the arguments are something which one has heard since the time of ramjanmabhomi movement (they cheer for pakistan in cricket matches, fundamentalist etc) and heard from the hardliners of BJP/VHP/Bajrang Dal/modi etc (all are terrorists and out to get us). While the former is plain silly the latter is both unfounded and a generalization. But this time what is scary is that more middle class common Indians seem to be agreeing. Fewer liberal voices are protesting! But the clinching argument often comes from the news of another bomb blast done by some radical group. Another worrisome point is tha...

did you see yahoo's time capsule? and did you notice anything? But first, for those people who actually have a life beyond the internet and are clueless about the time capsule here is the summary: So yahoo wants the future generations to know what 2006 was all . So they want you to "..contribute photos, writings, videos, audio ...drawings ... favorite blog, web site, or podcast. (i assume that this knowledge will not include google's rising profits or yahoo's dwindling ones). It will then be beamed into space and given to the smithsonian museum, where it will be reopened in 2020. Note they give the freedom to put in anything ...as long as it is a potrait of the present to the future. well, you'd think that the netizens would freak out and pour in their passionate hates and cravings.--"Islamophobia, jesus saves, pictures of pamela anderson"....endless possibilities. But wonder of wonders....what do most people put? a pix of the person they love most in the...

I had an talk with an educated, intelligent human being today. Just the mention of human rights activism seemed to arouse his greatest ire. I wondered why! He did not seem to be angry with people who killed other people, or with exploitation or racism or anything which he personally may have been a victim of. His greatest anger is reserved for the ‘activist’; who at the most may be indirectly trying to better his life, do his environment some good, make the world a more secure place for his children or at the very worst can be counted as a harmless eccentric who will never be able to harm him. (Through free will or circumstances or lack of monetary resources). I have often noticed that the same intense anger displayed by other people when confronted with individuals or organizations who may be trying to do the world some good (however misguided it may be). Not disagreement, not sarcasm—just intense passionate anger. This led to a related thought. Has somebody ever realized that it is t...