The start

I started at 4 am in the morning from home to airport, reached Infosys campus in Mysore at 4 pm. There was a special TED desk set up at Bangalore Airport. I mean that’s just how big TED is, dedicated desk at an international airport. From Bangalore they had arranged for frequent shuttle service to Mysore. So all of us were in a Volvo bus with a police escort navigating through Bangalore traffic. It was weird to some of us, annoying to some other of us. And then there were some like me who were too busy sleeping all the way.

The Venue

The entrance of Infosys campus looks like a huge Victorian palace. Like really huge. And inside it looks like we are in a mini picture perfect world. The big UFO kind of building, which is like the signature of Infosys campus is called the Multiplex. You can see it from behind trees and buildings and you can tell its a bit of a walk within the campus from your hostel building to the conference area to the food area to the multiplex and so on.

The great thing is the campus has plenty of bi-cycle parked here and there, they are meant for public use, you can just hop on any one of them.

I came to my room, took a shower made some tea for self and then headed for the TED Fellows photo shoot where they took modeling portfolio type of head shots of us fellows. Some of the fellows were then filmed for a short interview. They kind of goofed up at organizing that bit but that’s ok.

The dinner

The only big thing this evening was the TED community dinner which had a special restricted area for TED Fellows. So in this one floor we were 100s of fellows along with the host fellows, guest fellows and organizers.

Earlier we were given a fellows book which has the profiles of all fellows. I didn’t really read it. And it was so embarassing when people came up to me saying, “I read about you on the book.” I couldn’t say, “oh how sweet, but I didn’t read about you.” So I just stupidly smiled.

Of all the people I met the most remarkable meeting was with this 16 year old boy from West Bengal, Babar Ali who can be called the youngest headmaster of the world. Read about his amazing efforts in educating 800-900 children on this BBC story.

I met Tauheed, my blogger friend from Bangladesh the one who nominated me for fellowship, for the first time today. It was such a joy to see him finally in real life.

The other noteworthy people I met were Tom Rielly, Director, TED Fellows and he called me a fellow queer activist. Nothing can beat that joy. Read his bio here

Met the father of Indonesian bloggers Enda Nasution but couldn’t talk at length. Many more interesting people were there but I can’t remember their names, need to catch up with all of them tomorrow.

The food was great even greater were the lady attendees of TED India. They are all such gorgeous ladies, I tend to feel out of place. The men are not so great, men don’t have it in them anyway. Well there were a few of them that I did take a close look at but let that be classified information for now :P

The real action starts tomorrow, breakfast is at 7.30. Keep following this space, I might live blog a few sessions.

(To be continued to Day 1 of TED India)

Happy Diwali

Originally uploaded by samyukta_basu

Gone are the days of fire works and crackers on Diwali, gone are the days when we used to wake all night up to have the Kali puja’s maha bhog.

This year we didn’t even buy phuljharis. But we got lots of candles and diyas. And we lit the earthen diyas in the traditional way with oil.

Things have changed for all of us. Sister and I are too grown up for crackers, we don’t have the time to do all those shopping.

But still our Diwali was nice and simple and well lit.

Wish happy Diwali to all my readers.

Woke up to this absolutely shocking news, Stephen Gately of the famous Irish boyband Boyzone is dead. BBC reports,

Boyzone singer Stephen Gately has died suddenly at the age of 33 while on holiday in Majorca. Spanish police said there were no signs of suspicious circumstances, but the cause of death is not yet known.

Gately was on holiday with his long-term partner Andy Cowles. His bandmates said they were “completely devastated” and are now travelling to Majorca.

Boyzone manager Louis Walsh has pulled out of Sunday’s edition of ITV1’s X Factor in the wake of Gately’s death.

Looks like 2009 is going down in history as the year of shocking celebrity deaths and of all of them Stephen’s loss shocked me the most. Even though I wasn’t exactly a teenager in those days, but I have been obsessed with Boyzone, Ronan and Stephen in particular in the 90s. So many memories are right now flashing through my mind.

I don’t even how to begin telling about how much I have been influenced by Stephen’s news of being a homosexual. I think I owe my LGBT rights sensitivity to him, I didn’t even know what is gay unless he came out and hat it not been for him I wouldn’t have taken interest in their world.

He came out after 7 years of hiding and poured his heart in his first single from his solo album, A New Beginning. It was a new beginning for his solo career after Boyzone as a band retired, and it was the start of a new life where he could proudly be who he really was. He wrote,

Seven years I’ve waited
Seven years of holding on
Yes, it’s been
Yes, it’s been
Always get my faith and
I always knew this day would come
Let everybody know

I’ve made up my mind
It’s time for a new beginning
I’m living my life, yeah
It’s time for a new beginning

There’s a new day coming
I’m getting ready for a change
Yes, I am
Yes, I am
Gotta keep on running
Gotta be a better way
Yes, there is
Yes, there is

I gotta do what’s in your heart
Say what’s on your mind
Everybody (everybody)
Gotta be true to myself
I feel now that it’s my time
Let everybody know, yeah

[Link to the video on youtube]

Who would have known the new beginning that he was looking forward to was supposed to be so short lived, so many things remained unfinished. Stephen’s last tweet

“Still busy – lots going on. Focussing on finishing my book next so may be quiet here.”

Now his twitter stream would forever be quiet. Why such unfortunate things happen?

Rest in peace Steo, we would miss you so dearly. Strength and peace for your family, Lots of Love.

—

Time to rush to work for me, will write more about him later. Meanwhile check out the following links.

Stephen Gately a Life in Picture by Telegraph

Stephen Gately Obituary by Telegraph

Sir Elton John pays tribute to Stephen

You wait for a whole month to tell the world about something you achieved, then on the D-day you login to your twitter account and see that there are about 50 odd congratulations sent your way for achieving that, even before you could announce it. You achieved something the world was looking out for. That is a great feeling.

In my case that thing was, TED India Fellowship. I am one of the 103 extraordinary individuals who joins the TED fellows program at the TED India 2009 conference to be held in Nov at the Infosys campus, Mysore, India.

The TEDIndia Fellows are a diverse group of men and women, representing not only India, Pakistan and Bangladesh but also Indonesia, Canada, Tajikistan, the United States, China, Nigeria and Oman. TEDIndia Fellows include engineers, environmental scientists and pollution experts, human-rights activists, musicians, athletes and filmmakers. (From the conference press release)

Something extraordinary happened which catapulted me into the bandwagon of some of the most classy, intelligent, creative and dedicated people in the world, a group I always thought I don’t belong to. As I looked through the list of my fellow TED fellows I felt  how insignificant my academic achievements are in comparison to them. I don’t have no foreign degrees or Phds, I didn’t go to Harvard, I am no IITian, IIMite or ISBite, I am no school topper, I never won a medal or a trophy for academics. I graduated out of ordinary school and college with medium grades.

Then what makes me special? Why do I deserve to be on TED? Somebody asked me on Twitter right after the fellows were announced, “@sanjukta what did you do ! like really…to get on there.“ I didn’t think it was a very polite question to ask but I politely replied, “Not sure, I guess I was just being me all my life and that got me this far“

If there is anything about me that I am proud of, it is my identity in all its imperfection and that’s what inspires people. This unconventional woman in an unconventional body doing unusual things yet living a simple life; there is nothing extraordinary about me except that I refuse to be ordinary at every turn of the road.

Few people I want to thank

I would have never thought of applying for TED on my own. I didn’t even know it was around the corner and that they were accepting the applications. I was nominated by Mohammad Tauheed a TED fellow himself and founder and Chief Editor of Archsociety.

I met Tauheed through blogs 4 years back. The initial connection was because he was from the country where my roots are, Bangladesh. Who would have thought our little virtual friendship would bring us this far, it is amazing how much we can connect over blogs and other social media and how deep can that relationship be. I didn’t think I had the potential to be a TED fellow but he kept insisting I apply. I owe this fellowship to him to a large part.

Some of the things I achieved in the last 4 years in the field of New and Social Media wouldn’t have been possible without the support of friend, Swagat Sen. Most importantly I wouldn’t have been able to do the Blogging Outreach workshop without his support. So thanks to him.

I also wanna thank Bill Thompson and Julian Siddle who kindly allowed me to use their names as references in the application.

Now what is the big deal?

TED is beyond doubt one of the greatest things that happened to me. It is the biggest feather on my tiny cap, a great recognition of my worth. Suddenly this underdog is one of the elites, even as she continues to make her place in Indian blogsphere as somebody who fights elitism. On twitter I see elite tweeps now following me back, months after I started following them, perhaps because I got the fellowship, their first sign of approval. But I was special even without the fellowship, wasn’t I? This is why elitism is not good. This is why we should spend a moment to know the person knocking at our doors, there is something special in each one of us with or without an approval, one just have to look close and deep.

So did it come as a total surprise? Not really. It would be a lie, if I said, I didn’t already know there are reasons why I deserved the fellowship, its just that I didn’t know that they would be able to see those reasons. Turned out they did and that is why TED is the purest ensemble of the best minds with greatest ideas.

And now the Breakthrough

You have reached the end of this post but you are still wondering what does the word ‘Breakthrough’ in the title of this post stand for. You will find the answer in the next post, because I think this one is getting too long. As for the hints, its about my new job :)

The time has come for me to leave the city that has given me some of the best days of my life, Bangalore. Where am I going? Same place where I came from, the big bad yet annoyingly perfect capital city, New Delhi. A city which is known to be dil walon ki (of people with heart) yet where people are rude and foul mouthed, a city with big wide roads, relatively smooth traffic making it unsafe for women who dare to go out in the nights, a city where people either don’t care about you, or they care only enough to judge you, a city about which I can write a thousand bad things, I am going back to that city after spending two and half wonderful years in Bangalore.

(Good Bye Delhi, my last post as a Delhi Blogger two years back in Feb 2007)

My relocation from Delhi to Bangalore was a signpost moment in my life, and each day that I spent here were milestone sort. Life was at an all time high ever since I stepped in Bangalore, suddenly a door of fun, fame and friends had opened and I was overwhelmed with all that came my way. My being a part of the Barcamp organizers, my starting the Bangalore Bloggers group, the many Barcamps and other events that followed that year, the young and fun techies of Bangalore, the free and footloose lifestyle, the travel, the adventure, the smoking, drinking, men, sex, romance I did it all.

But it all seemed to have come to an end from the start of this year. In just two years too much changed. Suddenly all the fun activity have lost its charm, people have moved on to different cities or have found some other pre occupation. If at the start of 2007 it was one of the most exciting thing to go out for a bloggers meet in the city, in just 2 years bloggers meet have become passé and they have moved on to tweetups.

The thing about Bangalore life is that it’s very volatile. The crowd here is a floating crowd, young techies freshly out of college come to Bangalore after campus selections, they give this city and their companies 2-3 years and move on for better opportunities. For 2 years they live to the fullest. These two years become their days of living life on the edge. Which is why you see so much of energy in this city.

But if you stick around for too long you’d notice, under the bubbling and bursting surface lies hidden a slow, lethargic mundane life. It may take you couple of years but it eventually hits you with a feeling of Deja Vu, like you have seen and felt it all before. Those smoky pubs, those unshaven rock stars, those openly kissing gay couples outside Nasa pub, those sex workers near Trinity circle, they would all seem a bit too familiar if you have taken too many rounds of the city.

This feeling of having served my days here began to seep in my mind since the start of this year. I started feeling I have lost my purpose in Bangalore. I wanted more from my life. In December 2007 I rented out a small house, but now I wanted a bigger one. I wanted fancy furniture, a mini gym, flat TV…I just wanted more from everything.

And then I was posed with the question, do I want to my feet in Bangalore to be rooted further and deeper? Do I want to invest more here to have a bigger life? The answer was No. Because I was done with the fun in Bangalore, the city had nothing more to offer to me. So I decided to move, but not before I could find the right job.

(To be continued)

(Life in Bangalore is a series I started much later I actually wrote the first two parts of the series. This blog is the first result if you google for the words ‘Life in Bangalore’ and it is the 5th highest traffic grosser for this blog having got me 1095 hits since March 07. Here are Life in Bangalore Part  I and Part – II)

My sister is a complete opposite of who I am, she is more like dad and I am more like mom and since mom and dad have nothing in common sis and I were bound to be different. She belongs to this ‘old is gold’ school of thought, like those conservatives who think everything new, particularly in the field of technology, is a conspiracy to spoil the nation’s youth, those who whine over emails and are often lost in cheerful nostalgia about those beautiful days of hand written letters and pink envelopes carried by pigeons. (Good thing is she doesn’t think too highly of blogs either so chances are she wouldn’t be reading this)

So sometime back she had put this youtube video (which she thought was funny, I didn’t and I am writing this post to tell you why) on her facebook profile and asked me to see. [Link to the video]

I told you she belongs to the old school. So the video was a terrible take on Twitter. It said Twitter is for people who are self centered exhibitionist who only want to flaunt their extra ordinary life style. That, on Twitter people think they are talking but they are actually are not talking because no body is listening, that even though you think you are keeping in touch with your friends and telling them what you are doing all the time, truth is those on Twitter have no friends.

I totally hated the video which my sister loved enough to share it with her facebook friends. So I asked her, very cautiously lest we pick up a fight, “Why don’t you see Twitter as sharing? Everybody likes to share, didn’t you want to share the video, wouldn’t you be happy if more people saw what you shared and may be agreed with you, or even disagreed but reacted in some way?” She said, “No, I didn’t want to share it with the whole world, I only wanted to share it with you and some close friends, and probably post it on my profile only to give an idea to visitors about what I think of Twitter.”

It doesn’t matter to her whether people at large know what she thinks of Twitter but it does matter whether her close friends and family know. She being a private person is against the idea of putting her whole life out there in front of the world nonetheless she too once in a while feels like reaching out to very close friends through facebook.

Ultimately, she is restricting the use of social media but she is still using it.

Same is true for Twitter, you need not necessarily be sharing your updates with the whole world. You can choose to keep only your family in your timeline, you can privatize your updates so that random strangers don’t read them. You choose who follows you and who you follow.

This is true for most social media sites. You cannot generalize the usage of Twitter or any other social media tool for that matter in big square boxes. There are tons of creative users out there using these tools for various purposes. I’ll talk about Twitter specifically, not every body who tweets, do it for the same reasons as others. Not every body tweets the same information either. Sure, there are some people who are exhibitionist, who tweet to flaunt their extra ordinary life; sure there are some very lonely people who tweet only because they don’t have real friends to call or text. But that’s not everybody.

Is Twitter about exhibitionism?

I don’t tweet for any one of the above reasons but for all of the above. Sometimes I really want to flaunt, so I would tweet something which in my opinion would make me look very intelligent and cool and then I would want my followers to read my tweets and be jealous or be in awe. But sometimes I don’t care if somebody is reading my tweet or not, sometimes I just want to tweet to keep a record of my own random thoughts. If I don’t tweet they’d be lost.

But that’s what journals are for, isn’t it? If you don’t care if people read or not then why do you tweet instead of writing your thoughts in a private journal?

Because while I don’t always care if people read or not, I wouldn’t mind if they do. I don’t have a problem with people reading what I am doing. One might be comfortable sharing their life with a few close people; I am comfortable sharing it with thousands of them why should that be a problem? Why should they label me as some sort of ‘dishonorable exhibitionist’ just because I am comfortable in sharing?

Through Twitter we really do connect to somebody somewhere, no matter how insignificant that may seem, it still matters.

For example I came across this really funny page called Uncyclopedia. I wanted to share it with my friends as well as with the world at large. So I tweeted about it and also wrote a mail to few of my close friends. Half of them either didn’t read or read but didn’t care to reply and those who did reply did so only after two days. By that time my enthusiasm was lost.

But on Twitter a random stranger read it and responded immediately with equal enthusiasm. Then we exchanged a few @each other tweets over the topic. I don’t need to add him to my life as a friend right away, I don’t need to have him on my Gtalk or exchange numbers, he continues to be a stranger but for one tiny topic, for few insignificant moments our minds did connect and that means a lot. Some of us essentially live in the moment.

It’s not true that I don’t have real friends, of course I do, I have a great family too but not all of them would be interested in all of my pursuits so I don’t have the enthusiasm to share everything with them, but of the 1200+ odd followers on Twitter at least one of them would be interested in one or the other of my pursuits. So it helps to tweet rather than call or text the close friends.

Also, even if my friends replied to my mail immediately with equal enthusiasm there’s a limit to how many mails I can write to how many friends in a day. Pretty soon I would be called a spammer. No body wants unsolicited mails on their inbox but with Twitter – hey they asked for it by choosing to follow me.

Twitter is not really just about what you are doing

I was watching this really cool interview with Abhay Deol on NDTV and I randomly tweeted it. In few seconds I got a reply from a follower thanking me for the ticker, he had promptly switched on the TV and was able to catch the interview.

Now, I had no idea what this friend / follower was doing on a Saturday evening, no idea if he was a fan of Abhay Deol or not, no idea if he was at all in front of the TV so of course there’s no question of me calling him up and telling “hey am watching this interview”. A call was pointless, but my tweet was relevant to him.

Similarly I would never know which tweet is relevant to which of the 1200+ followers I have but I still would like to think that I am giving out information that is worthful to somebody or the other out there.

Exchange of information, breaking news, first hand account of major events are some of the most popular usage of twitter presently. Besides which twitter is also used as a place to broadcast yourself, like a quick shout to the world. Say you have a blog, every time you publish a new post you tweet the link. People get a reminder so they’ll visit the blog. Following somebody on twitter is easier than following blog RSS feeds or email subscriptions.

Most regular twitters also use it as random group chat on various topics ranging from funny to weird.

Celebrity tweeps

Twitter is now being used by celebrity to talk about themselves, connect to their fans, promote their new films/shows/books etc. With Indian celebs joining twitter and very actively tweeting and replying to their fans, twitter has revolutionized how we view our icons and how we communicate with them. While Gul Panag tweets to share her life with the fans at a more earthly and friendly level, Mallika Sherawatuses it as a fan mail central where she basically waves back to the fan frenzy. They both are very communicative yet we don’t see the fans (baring a few) asking redundant repetitive questions like “Are you dating your co-actors?” On twitter, we respect our stars more because we get to see their human side sans the glitter.

About more usages, I’ll just say, as many users, as many usages. Twitter is like talking, can we make a list of usages of our ability to talk?

Twitter and ‘privacy’

I don’t understand this argument about ‘privacy’ around Twitter. Some people have this nasty habit of giving one weird look up and down your person and express silent disgust when they find out that you would happily tweet about how great was the sex you had last night. They say, “don’t you have a sense of privacy?” Then there are some people who would shudder at the very mention of any thing about their private life going online whether via tweets or blogs (Must add, many such men are living under the constant fear of me disclosing all about their private lives someday).

Pray why is privacy always surrounded by a cloud of insecurity? What is so horribly wrong with our private lives that it must be kept a secret? What is it that we are so embarrassed of?

I once tweeted one morning how the sex last night was good and my man asked me why I tweeted about such personal stuff. He clarified he was only asking and didn’t have a problem with it, but still I wondered, why not? What is the big deal about a private tweet? You can tweet about the great movie you saw, the great dinner you had, but not the great sex. Eating and movie going are not part of your personal life? You can say you are feeling low, depressed, bored, but you can’t say you are feeling horny. At one time or the other we all are bound to feel horny but we won’t say it. Funny.

In conclusion, I would only say to the conservatives that twitter is NOT a conspiracy to spoil the youth, it is NOT a conspiracy to make us robots or retards its just one of the many things that we get excited about, use, explore and then be done with. So relax, don’t sweat too much on the negative implications of twitter overdose.

Crossposted on Desicritics

He said, “I am ready for love now, even an old fat ugly face will do, I just want to love.” She was not listening. Rather matter of factly she extended her muddy hand and said, “Give me a hand please, the stairs are too steep my height is short, body is fat and knees are weak.” He held her hand, pulled her up and they kissed.

This is actually from the archives, published on this blog as two different posts sometime in Aug’05. I am making them into one piece of, something I call a fusion between prose and poetry, a propestry.

Yesterday she dreamt she had finally found him. He lived in Mars and she in Venus…he had always seen her over the stars…she had always known him over the galaxies. One day she heard a knock on her doors. There was standing an angel, carrying a message from him to her, a message that was lightened up by the glitz of those million star studded galaxies it crossed before reaching her. It had the smell of the flowers that blossomed in his heart when he wrote it…it carried the smile that was there on his lips and the glow that he had in his eyes. She lost herself in that one splendid moment when she took the envelope in her hand…she wanted to sing a song, she wanted to write a poem, she wanted to take a rocket and fly to his planet.

It was ‘to be continued,’ “something nice is going to happen tomorrow,” she thought.

But when tomorrow came reality it her and she wished her life had stopped at yesterday. So she sang,

Let there be no sequel
Life is so much better
if there was no tomorrow,
If there was no after and no before,
If life could be just that
The moment she was living
her heart pounding,
pulse rating higher,
thinking “could this be him?”
Dreaming of her dream again,
hoping “this is him”

Tomorrow, there is no dream
Tomorrow she is suspicious and apprehensive,
Tomorrow is truth, she knows bitter;
Future was never faithful to her present.

Let there be no sequel

You did everything, you said.
“Got you the moon and the stars;
Diamonds and the pearls.”

Yeah and you even wrote me songs.
I even wrote you songs!

You did everything, you said.
“Took you to Paris and Rome,
holy Ganges and the great wall.”

Yeah and you even made me laugh.
I even made you laugh!
 
I am so cruel, you said,
“What more do you want,” you asked
when I said, “something is missing.”
And you said I broke your heart,
When I left before you woke up.

Now driving down I feel, it’s a bit funny
All you had to do was love.

This particular survey done by Tata Consultancy Services shows that  “The Web 2.0 Generation are digital natives, with high technology savvy, global in terms of aspirations and outlook as well as being increasingly optimistic about India’s economic future.” The survey is one of the largest conducted amongst youth in India covering 14000 students from schools across 12 Urban cities.

Some of the highlights of the survey:

63% of urban students spend over an hour online daily

93% are aware of social networking

Orkut and Facebook are most popular online destinations

46% use online sources to access news; TV, Newspaper users at 25%

62% have a personal computer at home

1 in 4 students own lap-tops in metros; 2 of 3 own music players

IT and engineering remain overwhelming popular career choices

Media & Entertainment, Travel and Tourism are emerging careers

USA, UK top list of international destinations for higher studies

The results make me very happy and give me new ideas for the Blogging Outreach Project. When I got inspired to do the blogging outreach 3 years back the new media scene was lot different, now a lot of things have changed. Most importantly internet has entered many more urban houses in the last few years.

Today, so many children are being well versed with new media, tomorrow they can use the medium of blogs, photo/audio blogs to spread information at a far greater speed than it is traveling now. Information is still not traveling at the speed in which it should, and is still restricted to a certain class / group of people. The real India, the villages are still not on the global map.

Each village needs a blogging center which would be manned by an army of citizen journalists, who would gather information and publish it directly to the world wide web, so that information reaches in real time to the largest audience without bias.

So much work to do.

Read more about the survey here.

I am watching the final episode of Rakhi Ka Swayamvar. Blogging it live and also tweeting. At the end of it I would mention why I loved this only reality show so much. As of now just the live reporting via tv of Rakhi Ka Swayamvar. (Read in reverse order from 11 to 1 and then read 12th onwards, sorry about the confusion)

Below is my twitter stream.

1. watching the final episode of Rakhi’s Swayamvar, two brothers of Rakhi, Ravi and Ram are grilling th 3 grooms
2. I watched t whole series for sole reason tht its an empowering matrimonial process 4 a woman, she is th ultimate decision maker.
3. I took it as a show and just a show, i never thought is rakhi’s wedding, but I appreciate th messages it gave out.
4. Even on mehendi, somone said, “Rakhi dont forget ur freinds like most women do after their wedding. Rakhi promised she wont forget, neither friends nor her work.
5. Today’s episode is being Live telecast from Hotel Leela Kempenski in Mumbai btw.
6. Rakhi is posting live comments on her facebook stauts update from the venue.
7. Oh dear lord, she IS indeed looking stunning..
8. correction in my prev tweet, rakhi isnt posting live comments, somebody on RKS page is doing it, that too isn’t live anymore. sorry 4 misinfo6 minutes ago from web
9. @b50 I am with Manas, they wud make a more fun couple. But i suspect there’s a huge twist in th waiting, somthing to do with money.3 minutes ago from web in reply to b50
10. Usually in these kind of reality shows there is always somthing to do with money, that wud be th big shocker in RKS
11. The grooms are being given one final chance to speak their heart to Rakhi. Whatever they have in their mind.
    
12. Manas’s mom can hardly speak she is getting so emotional.
    
13. Rakhi says I know everybody is admiring me, more my jewelery than me and laughs. She always have to tell the truth.
14. Looking at my twitter timeline, people who so vehemently dismissed the show earlier are all talking about it today. So who is the winner eh?
15. Rashmi on twitter had to switch of TV for daughter’s school in morning but then she couldn’t resist the temptation to catch the show, so switched it back.
16. She just tweeted this “@rashmibansal Decided we can run for school bus tom. Switched TV back on.. :) 5 minutes ago from web
17. I love the energy around the show. @b50 is the other person as excited as me, he too is live tweeting.
18. @rashmibansal Yay way to go…i love the energy around this show, rakhi is a winner all the way :D @b50 8 minutes ago from web in reply to rashmibansal
19. Sometime i feel Elesh is too good to be true, sometimes marrying these NRIs cud be a risky bet. #rks7 minutes ago from web
20. Rakhi is saying prayers for jesus
    
21. Rakhi and 3 of her friends, singing a prayer for jesus. She is a believer of Jesus
22. everybody in the hall requested to stand up, varmala is being carried, rakhi says varmala is small.
23. Rakhi says final words to the boys,all of you are my fav, i am really sorry if I cause heartbreak by not chosing one of you.
24. Time has stopped on rakhi ka swayamvar
25. rakhi is walking towards the boys wiath the varmala in hand..
    
26. she just passed all of them without chosing anybody
    
27. and now walking back stopping at each one of them, and again she didn’t pick anybody, says i hav decided to do swayamvar part 2, laughs
28. And its Elesh… he gets the varmala
29. Whoa..common guess..Elesh..thats it? Really? there is more i think. @b50 ?
    
30. wow. this is good even though i was suspecting twist, i wudnt have been happy to see it. this is good simple honest. Congrats @rakhisawnat
    
31. @rakhisawant good choice rakhi, congratulations to you and elesh.. Love for both of you
32. Now, Rakhi has still not said I love you to elesh
33. Now is the time, she is saying her feelings now, after Elesh once again said ILU to her along with som grt romantic lines.
34. and she said it, “I love you too”
    
35. Ring ceremony now
    
36. Rakhi speaks to audience, “all those who came, all were good, but best was Elesh, he has all qualities to be my husband”
37. “today we are getting engaged, we can marry too, but we both would need som time so today is the engagemnet”
38. “We’d marry and we’d do it in front of you only” so is that the 2nd part that’s coming?
    
39. the ring dont fit elesh.. hands had to be changed, from right to left.
    
40. They’ve cut the cake..now taking aashirvad from people
    
41. Ram asked both of them what r their POA next, what about the 7 pheras.. rakhi sings in between something arbit, while elesh tries to talk
    
42. rakhi – well we hav seen each other only on camera, so we need more time to know in th real life, he only has seen me with makeup getup etc
    
43. rakhi is so funny, says, kal main without make up pahunch gayi unke saamne and yeh bole “who are you” she did elesh’s impression.
    
44. RT @b50 If there’s one guy who’s getting major gaand jalao now, it has to be Mika. Look who got the publicity in the end dude.
    
45. @rakhisawant Rakhi, you are the winner all th way. I am very happy for you. Today everybody is talking about you, you’ve won.
    
46. I can’t help smiling looking at my twitter time line, everybody is tweeting about her today. So try as u may, u cant’ ignore Rakhi Sawant
    
47. At the end Ram said, whenever they would plan to take the saat pheras NDTV Imagine would be there to bring it to us the audience.
    

—

Twitter was bustling with Rakhi tweets today, she is the winner all the way. #Rakhi became a trending topic at no.8. Just proved that try as you may you can’t ignore Rakhi Sawant. But as always there are many who are judgmental about Rakhi and this show. I hate such kind of pretentious hypocritical judgmental people. I have been constantly fighting with all these people who speak ill of Rakhi and I feel tired already. I can guess how she must feel living every day of her life with so many people hating her.

Why do people hate her so much? Because she is unapologetic about who she is, she holds her ground in her pride and is not ashamed of being the real self unlike most of us who are hiding behind our masks. She can’t ass lick, she is annoyingly honest. Some people even has a problem with her inability to speak in English. They make fun of her accent. How narrow are these people?

The ohter day I fought with all such people who made fun of her accent. It is a mean heartless thing to make fun of anybody for any reason specially for their accent. Every body has funny accent, the south Indians have the Punjabis have the Biharis have the french, the spaniards, they all have funny accent, its a shame to make fun of people’s accent.

We all come with our queerness in some way or the other, some can be seen and heard some can’t, so we must learn to love and respect people and not judge them for some silly thing they have.

But look at the twitter time line and you’ll see people making stupid jokes about Rakhi Sawant. Some one said, “does Elesh know what is he getting into?” I felt like asking that person, did your boyfriend/husband/friends know what they were getting into. I mean who do you think you are that you pass such comments against Rakhi.

I get so angry, Rakhi has gone enough of shit in this life, can we please give her some love now, accept her for what she is and be happy for her that she got the success she wanted.

All the best to you Rakhi for everything ahead.

I don’t know what bad ‘luck’ had befallen upon me last night that I went to see the latest release ‘Luck’. What bad karma did I do in my past life that in this life I was destined to go through such a disturbing movie? Never before in my entire life did I walk out of a cinema hall without finishing the movie. No matter how stupid a film has been I have seen it till the end but this film hurt my sensitivity as a human being so much that I couldn’t sit there anymore.

What kind of demented psychopathic sadist must have made such a film? The film was so disturbing from ethics and human rights point of view and so dumb and sloppy from cinema point of view, I don’t even have words to express. To put it in one line - a soul less mash up of crazy demented ideas conceived while smoking something funny.

The movie plot is about a betting industry set up by a guy called Mussa (played by Sanjay Dutt) which puts money on people’s death. I have seen many violent films but the insensitivity of such a concept was so disturbing it beats them all. Let me describe just one scene for you – So you have this one big hall where hundreds of people are betting on the players (various characters played by Shruti Hasan, Imran Khan, Ravi Kishen, Mithun Chakraborty etc.) like in a typical horse racing ground. On a big screen in that hall you have images of the players standing in a desert somewhere. A message flashed “Betting closed, Game begins.” The game is that all these players will have to jump off from a helicopter 2000 ft above a hilly terrain, each one is wearing a parachute but only 6 out of 9 parachutes are in working condition, the players don’t know who picked what. The people who’ve put their money on the players are watching anxiously on the big screen to find out who lives and who dies. Suddenly one of the player’s parachute fails and he crashes into a tree. His dead body is shown hanging from the tree on the big screen, camera moves and cash money is shown to move from hand to hand amongst the betters.

In another scene about 15 players stand in one round circle each putting a gun at the person standing to the right and shoot a bullet into the head. Like a typical reality show with each game some players are eliminated, in this case they are simply killed. Once the bleeding bodies fall the game crew standing in the background come and carries the dead bodies away.

What kind of savageness is this? We hear these horror stories of human rights violation from Taliban, inhuman torture from sensitive war zones, we’ve heard stories of the holocaust, but it beats them all to see that a commercial film is being made out of this sadistic pleasure without having any sensitivity woven into it to dilute the brutality.

I am not saying it is a complete impossibility that people might agree to such life threatening games and even enjoy, we never know what adult people might do but in Luck there was a 15 year old girl too amongst the players.

We have heard of the cowboy gun fights where people voluntarily risk there lives and the winner by all means kills the loser, but there was a heroism factor involved in that. Traditionally gun fights were the means to settle disputes and not something done for fun. But in this film the players are not brave or heroic, they are not even doing it voluntarily, if any player says, “I don’t want to play this game, I want to back out, the Mussa guy comes and kills him.” I mean can it get any more sick.

In ‘Fight Club’ too consenting adults were shown to be engaged in activities inflicting pain upon themselves, but again there was a volition factor in it. There were rules and ethics in the Fight Club, “if somebody says stop, you stop”. But the game of life and death shown in Luck is sans all such sensitivity, logic, reason, ethics, intelligence and above all bravery.  

The film although titled luck is actually about chance. There is a difference between luck and chance. The little game Gabbar Singh played before killing his three men who came back empty handed from Ramgarh was chance – 6 shots, 3 bullets 3 empty, 3 men. But luck is more than chance, luck is a condition.

The 15 players were chosen because of their good luck, now if one has a good luck no matter how difficult the situation is one would survive, right? But that didn’t happen in Luck. Keeping 3 dysfunctional parachutes in a pack of 9 made it obvious that three players would die, and they did die. There was no surprise good luck factor in it. They could have shown that even though the parachute failed something else happened and the player survived because of his good luck.

Even assuming it is a piece of fiction and trying not being judgmental about the concept or story, from a film making point of view, it is a complete failure. The script and direction are so bad that you don’t feel anything for the characters; they all just look like morons who can’t act. You don’t get it why they are playing the game in the first place, their reasons are not convincing.

Some of the reasons – 1) Army Major who says ‘Koi shaq’ at the end of every sentence, needs money for wife’s medical expenses; don’t they have army hospitals? What about Safdarjung Hospital in Delhi if not anything. 2) Another dude needs money because his father committed suicide leaving crores of loans for son who is being threatened by a police inspector. Son thinks he will go to US to make “Ek ka chaar,” whatever it is supposed to mean, but can’t get VISA. Ultimately Mussa forces him to agree to the betting game reluctantly. 3) No reason given for why the other guys were there, like Ravi Kishen or that Chak de girl. Not a single element in the entire plot was real or believable.

For a while I laughed at the sloppy and immature way the film is shot, the camera angles were so poor like the director haven’t ever held a camera before, I don’t know what were they trying to do by keeping the camera behind the actors back making it appear like we were peeping from behind. Dialogues were poorly written and of course horrible acting. The stunts were so artificial, even a simplest thing as jumping from the helicopter is pathetically shot. After a certain point it all became disturbing.

I shouldn’t waste anymore of my time talking about this pathetic movie. I’ll just say that I am usually not the kind of person to criticize a product of creativity; if I don’t like a film I keep quiet about it, or say, no comments; I believe judging a film for what it is and not for what it could be; In the past I have put myself in the film maker’s shoes and enjoyed films like Ugly aur Pagli and Chandni Chawk to China but as it turns out I have my own limits.

Luck was so beyond tolerance that I couldn’t help criticizing it. What is more disturbing is that as always am trying to put myself in the filmmaker’s shoes and trying to understand what kind of demented mind makes such films.

I wonder how such a movie can even pass through our censor board. Are they sitting there only to control sex scenes, don’t they have a responsibility to check other objectionable material. Should films not have any ethics at all?

The film reminded me of the Japanese video game ‘Rapelay’ where players could compete with each other to virtually rape women, they could chose to rape pregnant women or school going kids. There were options by which they could impregnate the woman and even forcefully get her aborted.

Both in that game and in this film brutality is being done for fun and people are enjoying the brutalities. If such a film could pass through censor board why the porn industry is illegal, why Savita Bhabhi is banned? Rape and murder, sex and violence not much difference, no?

Ps. Luck has the potential to be the next cult movie after Gunda

Meet Ahana aka Mishkah, the baby girl who came to this world this morning at 8.20 am who would call twitter rock stars @snigdha and @lighttripper as mom and dad, and @sanjukta as Sexy Maasi :P

She is a very special child for many reason, one of them being her birth was perhaps the first in India that was live tweeted :D

Below are the updates from my twitter time line from 3 am to 8.30 am on 25th July 09. (To be read in revers order)

1. So should i go ahead and claim it to be india’s first ever birth on twitter? Live tweeting of arrival of vinayak snigdha’s baby Mishkah about 2 hours ago from web  
2. @girishmallya yep at least first india.. will put up th transcript on my blog. #livetweet about 5 hours ago from web in reply to girishmallya  
3. @fossiloflife @Harishk @rahulrrao @SiddharthPatel @harinathpv @StrikeMeGyllen Thank you all. will convey your congrats to them about 5 hours ago from web in reply to fossiloflife  
4. So I was live tweeting the birth of snigdha vinayak’s baby girl since 3 am last night till 8.30 this morning…you guys saw? about 5 hours ago from web  
5. I am signing out now about 10 hours ago from mobile web  
6. Ok its a baby girl. Pls congratulate th proud parents @snigdha @lighttripper about 10 hours ago from mobile web  
7. Vinayak’s mom getting impatient, but i’ll respect their privacy, Its their special moment about 10 hours ago from mobile web  
8. They are yet to come out and tell us..boy or girl. Vince taking pics i can see flashes going about 10 hours ago from mobile web  
9. And the baby is here i can hear it still dont know boy or girl. about 10 hours ago from mobile web  
10. I can hear snigdha frm th labour room, she’s pushing.. Vinayak is also inside about 10 hours ago from mobile web  
11. miracle of birth. We don kno wat color it’d b, wat sex, wud’t have large eyes or small watever it is 2 ppl wud love it more than their lives about 11 hours ago from mobile web  
12. #Live tweeting birth of snigha vinayak’s baby from cradle nursing home about 11 hours ago from mobile web  
13. She’s been staying strong so far, waiting for dr.Anuradha now. Am sitting outside labour room about 11 hours ago from mobile web  
14. @Snigdha being taken to labour room, 7 cm dialated, baby shud come in couple of hours. Wish her luck. about 11 hours ago from mobile web  
15. Contractions are happening every two mins for 60 seconds, it’ll go on like this 4 anothr 4-5 hrs it seems. about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
16. And am talking about young men who live in delhi nt som villager about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
17. Am feeling sleepy, with me also at th nursing home is vince’s mom. about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
18. Till date thr r men who send there wives to parents 4 dlivery. Its like go away wid ur mess come bak wid t baby, t pain is urs baby mine about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
19. Am feeling sleepy, with me also at th nursing home is vince’s mom. about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
20. @satishkini ya true.. But its too much pain about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
21. They just gave her anema, that thing is put up ur ass to clear ur belly or smthing, she hates dat bt u gotta do wat t doc says about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
22. @fossiloflife could u get som sleep yet? When in cold lie on ur side instead of back, helps about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
23. For those who came late, am #live tweeting th #birth of @snigdha @lighttripper’s baby. about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
24. Now she’s asking for sm pain relief, am thinking why women take this upon them? Just go 4 adoption no? about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
25. Vince is telling her bout breathing tecnique they learnt at pre natal class, bt i don think she’s intrested about 14 hours ago from mobile web  
26. Hungry am i. @having a britannia good day about 15 hours ago from mobile web 
27. Sorry it should been 7 am in prev tweet about 15 hours ago from mobile web  
28. Next check up at 7 pm, its gonna be a long wait. Vinayak is timing th contractios am writing them dwn about 15 hours ago from mobile web  
29. Being made to change room as th AC of prev room wasn’t workin. Shudn’t they pre check these things? They charge so much. about 15 hours ago from mobile web  
30. We’ve reached cradle nursing home, @snigdha’s contraction started an hour ago about 15 hours ago from mobile web 
31. we are off to bed, it will take about 4 to 5 hours for snigdha to start having contraction, gonna be a long and exciting day tomorrow. :)about 19 hours ago from web  sitting with @snigdha and @lighttripper he is googling side effects of artificial labour pain induing..snigdha is about to do that about 19 hours ago from web
32. Sitting with @snigdha and @lighttripper he is googling side effects of artificial labour pain inducing..snigdha is about to do that about 19 hours ago from web

"I don't like this place, I was better inside"

Those who thought I was too crazy to have tweeted this  ’private’ event (some people on the comment thread below) read this and open up your mind. Twitter’s founder Ev William’s wife tweets about her delivery too.

Jango at his daily vigil

This morning we lost our dog Jango.

He was 11 and a half years old. He had never shown signs of old age until last Sunday when he refused to eat his meals.

This was the first time ever that he said no to any thing that was edible. He was the most hungry dog we’ve ever known. Naturally it worried us all. On Monday, my mom, dad and sister took him to the Vet. The Vet said, “he doesn’t have any ailment as such, just signs of old age, give him liquid food, he’ll be fine.”

But his conditioned worsened during the week. Meanwhile on Tuesday my sister and mom had to travel to Kolkata and other places which they wanted to cancel considering jango wasn’t well but the vet assured them that the situation wasn’t so serious. He also assured that I need not take a flight to Delhi immediately. He said he has enough time to live but of course he is getting old. So mom and sis went ahead with the travel plan leaving Dad to look after Jango. I am of course based out of a different city.

And here in Bangalore I came over to stay at Snigdha-Vinayak’s place for couple of days since the doctor said Snigdha might go into labour any time now. In case it happens in the night, Vince would drive there should be somebody to sit with her. The big news also came that their dogs Pondy and Alleppy are also gonna be parents, Alleppey is pregnant.

In just 5 days his health declined sharply, so much so that finally this morning I decided to take a flight home hoping to be with him for the last few days, never did I know he didn’t even have few more hours.

Jango had stopped moving since last night. Till yesterday morning he could walk albeit with great difficulty. Dad had taken him to the vet clinic in a three wheeler as we don’t have a car. The doctor gave him drip and some injections. Once he came back home he just lied down in the balcony and didn’t move for many hours though he was awake with his eyes wide open. In the evening he managed to walk from the balcony to our living room. Dad thought that was a sign of improvement. But within few minutes he rushed to the balcony again to puke and since then till today noon he never moved from where he lied.

In the morning dad tried to help him stand up but he couldn’t. He had defecated too while lying. It seemed to be impossible for dad to take him to the hospital in this condition but I argued over phone that you have to do something. I could understand dad’s helplessness, he is an old man himself and none of us are there. I found myself caught in between the anticipation of a life to come and another to go, was confused should I stay in Bangalore for the baby to come or should I fly to Delhi to hold Jango one last time.

From morning 9 to 10 I made a few calls here and there, most importantly I called Khurram da to tell him Jango’s situation. He said he would soon be there. Meanwhile I headed for Ulsoor to pick up my clothes and also needed to go to office once to pick up some important folder from the shared Drive.

Around 12 noon, my bags were packed and was on my way to UB City, my office. While Khurram da had reached our Dwarka house to find Jango lying helplessly. He picked him up and asked dad to put the locks on the door. Right when Khurram was carrying inside the car Jango streched his body once and broke the last breathe, by the time dad climbed down the stairs he was gone.

Stuck at the MG Road signal I called Khurram da on his cell he said Jango was gone. Even dad wasn’t there in this last moment.

Such is life, Snigdha’s baby, Alleppey’s litter and Jango’s demise so much happening at the same time. You don’t know how to feel. Suddenly I want to believe in reincarnation. I want to believe Jango would be back as one of Alleppey’s litter.

Jango has left a void in our lives, particularly dad. In our family Jango needed dad’s attention the most. Now that he is gone, dad will feel the most lonely. It is almost like there is no body who needs dad so desperately anymore. Sis and me being grownups now, all his doting fatherhood was dedicated to Jango and Jango alone. Not anymore.

“Tomorrow morning no one would care anymore if I woke up early or not. I can sleep till 9, Jango wouldn’t be here to push me to take him out for a walk. ” Dad told me standing at the burial ground in Najafgarh. Jango used to wake him up at 4 sharp, then again at 5 then again at 6. He hated that but he loved that because he wanted to take care of him. Not anymore.

After Jango was gone my first thought was how would dad cope. With none of us there and even Jango gone the house must come to bite him. I insisted he takes a flight immeditaely to Kolkata for the family occassion for which mom and sis left. But he said he said he is ok and doesn’t want to go anywhere now. This wasn’t the first time for him that he was dealing with loss. His younger bro died at mid 40s then about 10 years back we lost our grandpa too.

“I am rather happy that you guys weren’t here to see him because you wouldn’t be able to bear the sight, the sight of the pain that reflected on his face, the sight of him being buried.”

I would never fully know what Dad have gone through today. Even Khurram da said he could barely go through all that.

What a day Jango chose to leave, Sunday when dad was at home, when Khurram da could be called. What if it happened on a working day? Dad would have come home to find Jango dead. Jango left without giving us much trouble. Just 4-5 days of real suffering and he was gone.

Pets they teach you how to deal with loss, sudden loss. At this moment of grief all of us are scattered in different cities and we all are trying to cope with the loss, me here in Bangalore, mom and sis in Guwahati and dad in Delhi.

Miss you forever Jango, RIP.

My previous posts on Jango are here

Pause for a while, take a moment, spend it in mourning for all that is dead, dying and will die. Death of the faith in justice system, of women’s rights, of the many helpless innocents killed at work or leisure…So many death and so many killers walking free.

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All 6 accused in the Prof Sabharwal murder case were set free by a Nagpur Court today. The accused who were ABVP (students wing of BJP) activists had allegedly attacked and beaten Prof Sabharwal outside the Madhav College in Ujjain 3 years ago. [Source] The entire nation had watched the disturbing brutality, a wounded unconscious Prof, the “guru brahma guru vishnu guru devo maheshwara” being carried inside an ambulance. Broad day light 100s of on lookers. Yet they couldn’t find one witness to make a strong prosecution.

Today the Court noted the prosecution has failed to prove the charges and aquitted all the accused. So did no body kill him? Did Prof Sabharwal die a natural death? How will it feel if tomorrow the Court says “the prosecution has failed to prove the charges” and sets free Ajmal Kasab.

BJP is now seeing this as a moral victory. They were seen shouting slogans outside the Court today. On CNN IBN a BJP spokesperson said, “We always had faith in judiciary and that faith has been restored. Truth has won.”

Somewhere the evil had the last laugh as the BJP person went on accusing Prof Sabharwal’s son to be playing politics in collusion with Congress party. In the end of the debate, Himanshu, Prof Sabharwal’s son said, “I am glad you are not suggesting I plotted the death of my father to enter politics.”

Himanshu Sabharwal would now approach Supreme Court.[Source]

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In another BJP ruled state in a certain mass marriage drive around 150 women were made to go through virginity tests before they could be declared fit for marriage and given the Rs. 6500 wedding gift. Most of these women were from the lower caste. (Source) I thought the Indian women were better off than the Zulu tribes in Africa, but no they are not.

Such shameful act of extreme patriarchy, such horrific display of man’s control over a woman’s body and soul, in a progressive democracy such as ours. Where are we going with these? They saybeing gay is unnatural. This is not unnatural? Leaders of all the major religions, Christianity, Islam, Jainism, Hinduism they all came together for the first time in history to hold a press conference last week to condemn the Delhi High Court judgment legalizing gay sex. They didn’t come together after 26/11 Mumbai terror attack, they didn’t come together after 9/11, this is an issue far more important to them.

When women are raped, killed, burnt alive for dowry, made to go through such humiliation they sit at peace, don’t they have any shame? And what about the Government. Allegedly the girls who refused to go through the test were denied the wedding gift. What were they organisers  thinking?

The CM of Madhya Pradesh, where this incident happened, blatantly denied any such test. Probed further the officials are now saying it was pregnancy test and not virginity test.Why should there even be a pregnancy test? Apparently they (officials) wanted to be sure that no girl is taking wrong advantage of the mass marriage scheme. What on earth does that mean? Also note some women were found pregnant and they were indeed denied marriage.

What kind of drive is this anyway, that of mass marriage, what the hell is the point behind such activity. I feel so ashamed.

—

In another BJP ruled state of Gujarat 100s of Dalits died due to consumption of alcohol. The state is a dry state. Clearly the state machinery is making money from the illegal liquor market which is why the ban on liquor in the first place. And why not this is BJP rule push all your so called culture, ethics and morals force fully down people’s throat. If they dare raise a voice kill them. Talk about prosperity and development. Well Germany too developed a lot during Hitler’s rule.

—

Congress ruled state that of Delhi, back to back two accidents in the Delhi Metro Rail project. Casualties are of course the poorest of the all class, the workers. The DMRC in its over eagerness to complete the project by 2010 is ready to compromise on safety norms and workers lose their lives. DMRC chief jumped gun and gave resignation, a calm fair maid Sheila Dixit came on TV and mentioned how DMRC cannot survive without him. The chief returned, few hundreds thousands would be announced in compensation next, how much would actually be paid we don’t know, and of course no one would be held guilty for the lost lives.

—

In all of the above there would be a commission or an enquiry there would be two political parties mudslinging at each other, there would be media opening debates the ‘Big Fights’ and the ‘We the People.’ There would be junta smsing their ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the media goons. And all the while the killers would walk free somewhere amongst us, and the evil would have the last laugh.

Ps. I am not even starting on the continuous Maoist attacks, dunno where to start. Separate post for that may be.

A more polished version of this is on Desicritics.

They believe in every few ages every time the affairs of the world goes haywire God pays a visit to earth, its the same God who just comes in various different avatars. He came and wrote holy books, The Geeta, The Bible The Quran.

But not every time will he write holy books will he, in different ages need of the hour changes. So this one time he came and gave man kind, the Pop music.

Rest in Peace, Michael Jackson, you were that God sent who gave us pop music. Do come back again for this world wouldn’t be the same without you. Michael tried in vain to teach her moon walk and just gave up at her attempts. “Michael loved to laugh, MJ’s laugh was the sweetest and purest laugh I’ve ever known, he was very mischievous.”

—

Watching the Live telecast of the Memorial service from Staple Center.

Condolence messages from Dianna Ross and Nelson Mandela were read out.

Michael’s body brought center stage.

Mariah Carey’s musical tribute

A poem recited by Queen Latifa, “Now we know that we know nothing” was the opening line of the poem. Brought tears to my eyes. Sums up Mj’s whole life…no body could know him, and now we never will.

Lionel Ritchie’s musical tribute

Berry Gordy founder of Motown now giving his tribute speech, he started by saying “Michael was like a son to me.” He is talking about Motown’s history and Michael’s association with it. “He is the greatest entertainer that ever lived.” – Berry Gordy

Stevie Wonder’s musical tribute. Speechless and tearful after that beautiful tribute by Stevie. I still can’t believe its him lying still in there in that casket, not tapping his foot. That body is still, those feet are still that voice is mute… :(

Jennifer Hudson Michael’s “will you be there.” Noooo… this really makes me cry. :(

Rev Al Sharpton’s tribute speech: “Michael never gave up dreaming, it was his dream that change the world…it was him who brought blacks and whites and asians and latinos together, it was him who sang “we are the world” he created a comfort level that made people feel connected, that made people from all over the world connect…Michael made us love each other…as you climb high over the mountain you make scars and tear your skin but don’t focus on the scars…Michael never stopped.”

“There was nothing strange about your father. What’s strange, is what he had to deal with”. -Rev Al Sharpton

I was thinking about it and Barkha Dutt just expressed similar thoughts on twitter, why is the memorial so predominantly black? Strange.

John Mayers performing ‘Human Nature’ now. He is perhaps the only white artist to perform.

Brooke Shields tribute speech. She is talking about her friendship with him. She was 13 when she met him. Her vice is choking as she speaks. She says, “Michael loved to laugh, he had the purest laugh I’ve ever seen.” Michale’s favourite song was the song that Charlie Chaplin wrote for the movie Modern Times, ‘Smile’

Jermaine Jackson now performing Michael’s favorite song ’smile’

I didn’t know untill Jemaine’s performance that I can cry this uncontrollably for MJ. I still feel he would jump out of that casket with an Aaaaaaaao.

Bernice King and Martin Luther King III ’s tribute speech.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s tribute. She said to Michael’s family, a man is innocent until proven guilty. Michael had a big heart he cared. He never stopped giving, he touched people. When we were at war he sang to us heal the world, he said it doesn’t matter if we are black or white, he asked us to beat it, beat the violence because and he asked us to look in the mirror if we want to make a change.

Rep Sheila declared Michael a legend and an American music icon.

Usher now performing, ‘Gone too soon’

So much sorrow…Sigh!

Smokey Robinson’s tribute speech. First time he heard the 11 year old Michael he wanted to see his birth certificate because he couldn’t believe someone that young could sing with such feelings, you need to know a lot to have that feeling in your notes.

Shaheen Jafargholi now performing, ‘who is loving you’. Shaheen was supposed to perform with Michael in the forth coming ‘This is it’ tour in London.

A performance from Michael’s scheduled This is it tour, his favorite part, ‘We are the world, by Michael and Lionel Richie, being performed by his singers and the other artists present at the Memorial.

That concludes the Memorial, WTF we need more Michael…this is not fair…we needed more.

Michael’s family one by one saying a few words, Jermaine’s voice breaking. Oh my tears rolling down my cheeks, one of the brother asked Michael to hug another of their brother. Don’t know what it was about, may be they lost a brother before. And right after he just broke in tears.

Seeing Michael’s daughter Paris crying made me wanna kill myself.., why such sorrow, she said, “I just want to say that ever since I was born daddy was the best father one could be.” And then she broke in tears and so did the world with her. She is 11.

Michael, please come back…heal the world, make it a better place.

Writing this in hurry, couldn’t have waited.

History have been created today in India, this morning Delhi High Court gave its judgment on the petition filed by Naz Foundation challenging the constitutionality of Section 377 of IPC which criminalizes all acts of oral and anal sex between individuals irrespective of age and consent.

High Court ruled in favour of the petition and said,

We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar it criminalises consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution. The provisions of Section 377 IPC will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors. By ‘adult’ we mean everyone who is 18 years of age and above. A person below 18 would be presumed not to be able to consent to a sexual act.

Read the full judgment here.

The religious groups have already started reacting negatively. They say this is a sad day for civilised people. May their God help them.

The politicians are quiet, Law minister said he would react after reading the judgment.

The road ahead is still long, the next struggles would be about homosexuals couple’s property rights, adoption rights, marriage rights, domestic violence in intimate relations etc.

I have written more about this case earlier here.

A more detailed report in the making. Crossposted on Desicritics

Bangalore Queer Pride Parade, 09. Photo: Vinayak Das

Queer people in Bangalore, Delhi, Chennai and Bhubaneswar today celebrated their ‘being’ under a rainbow colored flag. Gays, lesbians, kothis, hijras, intersexs, transsexuals and straight people walked the streets in large numbers amidst busy traffic dancing, laughing giggling, posing for the numerous photographers…and mostly, being proud of whoever they were in their ‘weirdest’ state of being.

In Bangalore the march started from National Law College and passed through Minerva Circle to reach Town Hall.

One of the brightest and most colorful processions one could witness, it had people dressed in traditional saris and jewelries to micro-minis to off shoulders and sexy tattoos. They had all painted rainbows on their bodies and faces. Some of them wore masks some didn’t.

The smile,the being, the pride. Bangalore Queer Pride Parade 09. Photo Vinayak Das

A three wheeler with a loud speaker led the march with one of the participants chanting slogans like, “Hindu Muslim Sikh Isai, Hetro Homo Bhai Bhai;” “Gay hua to kya hua, pyaar hua ikraar hua;” “One two three four, open up your closet door, five six seven eight, don’t assume your kid is straight.”

The rest of the near thousand people followed the three-wheeler chanting the slogans over and over again. Most of them carried placards and posters with witty lines like, “Gay ho – Jai ho;” “Section 377 sucks” “I am the pink sheep of my family” “Welcome to Ben-gay-luru” and more.

Somewhere behind were 3-4 drummers beating their drums producing an amazingly contagious energy and the colorful people danced to the drum beats like there was no tomorrow.

Photographers, many from the media and many more who just wanted to document the event and show their support, chased the sexy dancers to capture their best moments. And the participants were more than happy to pose for them, give them their best looks.

They danced, they sang, they raised slogans, they teased, they flaunted, they giggled, they shied away, they rejoiced and they smiled. A smile that came from within reflecting the sheer joy they felt in walking for an event that was about their being. It was a day they walked without fear looking straight at common people’s eyes giving a message loud and clear, “Look at me, I exist, how long are you going to ignore me, how long would you call me a freak, how long would you turn your face away when I try to talk, how long will you call me unnatural?”

The joy, the pride. Bangalore Queer Pride Parade 09. Photo:Vinayak Das

The joy and festivity of the march stays with you even after you have left the venue and then you are forced to think, “How is it going to help the humanity if those smiles are turned into tears? How is it going to help God’s scheme of things if these beautiful hearts are crushed, their existence denied and their right to love and marry a person of their own choice snatched.”

About the cause…

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code is a law which tries to do exactly all that. It is a law that wants to and every day does crush millions of such colorful hearts and souls, in this country, whose only crime is that they want to love a person who had similar genitals like they do.

The religious leaders say it is unnatural for a man to love another man or a woman to love another woman because they don’t contribute to nature’s growth, in other words they do not procreate.

By that logic human beings are nothing more than a penis and a vagina whose only purpose is to produce babies.

The saddest part about this law is that it made India go back 100s of years in time.

Homosexuality, men having sex with men, men having sex with eunuchs and drags, had always been accepted in India. The Khajuraho temple, Konark Sun Temple and the Kamasutra are the living examples of that acceptance. Oral sex and anal sex are explicitly depicted in the temple sculptors and Kamasutra.

Hinduism as a religion doesn’t have any say in sexual performance unlike other holy books where a certain type of sexuality is labeled as sin.

It was in 1860 that the British rulers introduced this alien concept to us, that anal sex are unnatural and that it must meet criminal consequences, without having any regard to our thousands of years old culture and without having any regard to something called consent.

And why would they give regard to culture, tradition or even consent, the law was after all meant to control Indians, the dirty uncivilized natives, who didn’t know what is right or wrong for themselves, why would the super lords care about the native’s consent if they thought anal sex was wrong that was it.

Just think how dumb must a nation be that it is still living with this law which was designed with the very purpose of suppressing its own culture and people. When the British introduced this law they thought Indians were barbaric, un-cultured, obscene, they have such books and temples that talks about sexuality, they must be set right by imposing strict laws. Thus came a law that went against our own expression of sexuality.

British were gone but we continued with their laws. Not just that some of us are so dumb that they now think being homosexual is against Indian Culture. These queer pride parades are a way to remind the law makers of this country that they cannot keep this unjust law and continue violating the citizen’s basic right to chose their sexuality.

The ignorant in the fool’s paradise…

In the March today a friend and I approached the curious onlookers standing either side of the march and asked them if they knew what the march was about and if they supported the cause.

First we approached this 3-wheeler, the driver had just been handed a Bangalore Queer Pride pamphlet which he was going through quite attentively. We asked him if he knew what the pride was about. He had read the pamphlet by then and said he knew and that he surely supported the cause. Behind him in the passenger seat were sitting 3 ladies, one in her 50s the other 2 relatively much younger may be late 20s to mid 30s, the youngest one had a baby. All decked up head to toe in traditional white body golden border sari, gold jewelry, jasmine gajras, bindis etc.

I asked them, “Mam do you know what is this marching all about?”

The older lady said “No” with a smile.

I then turned to the younger ones and said, “Did you read the pamphlet?” They gave a quick look at the pamphlet again but didn’t react at all except a confused smile.

I said, “Mam this is gay pride parade.”

“What is gay?”

“Mam, homosexual, people loving people of same sex, boy loves boy, girl loves girl, that type? You know?”

The lady now gave an even bigger and terribly embarrassed smile, and shook her head in negation with a big “Noooooooo.”

The whole thing was so symbolic, these women in their white saris all decked up and perfect like nothing in the world can touch them, living in their own world without a clue about the other rainbow colored world.

I took a quick look at the baby and thought if only she had heard that part of the slogan more carefully, “Five six seven eight, don’t assume your kid is straight.”

How do we intervene in their perfect world?

These pride parades that are being held annually is definitely a big step in that regard. New York would be holding its 40^th annual Gay pride parade. India’s first gay pride parade was held in 1999, Delhi and Bangalore would be holding their 2^nd parade, Chennai 1^st and perhaps Bhubaneswar also its first parade. That’s how many years behind we are but we are definitely have a strong movement.

More cities should join in the queer pride celebrations every year. One common platform is required for the queer people of all over the nation, their protest activities should be concerted, united they should stand.

Media would play a big role which includes us bloggers too.

Films and television are the other great media particularly the Saas Bahu serials. Put a gay character in one them, perhaps call it “Kuyunki Saas meri lesbian thi.”

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I can go on but may be another day. This was my first gay pride parade and trust me I am not saying it for the heck of it I really feel my life is so much more colorful now.

I will continue writing about the queer issues in the coming days, so keep an eye on this space.

More photos on Vinayak Das’s Flickr Stream

Girl boy were going through a break up. They promised they would never talk. This morning boy messaged girl, “MJ is no more.” She called him back and they shared the fond memories they had about MJ and his songs. How they danced to his tunes in school, how they bought blank cassettes and recorded the MJ songs for their friends on their birthday. MJ brought them together again.

Most people I know are calling their families to share the grief. On twitter most of us are sharing our most fond memory of the King of Pop. His death is like a global human tragedy.

I am shocked to say the least. The first thing I do in the morning is switch on the radio. Today when I switched it on they were playing Black or White. They have been playing at least 4-5 MJ songs all day all this month. It was a part of a contest. At the end of the day one caller who would be able to correctly identify all the MJ songs played during the day would be selected as finalist and at the end of the month long contest, one winner would be chosen amongst the finalist. The winner and a partner would be flown to London for Michael Jackson’s last ever concert. But not any more.

Similar contests were going on radio and TV all over the world. Until a few days back, the world had forgotten him, his aura and charisma was caught between criminal charges, legal hassles, financial crisis and health problems, like an ordinary man he was failing, life was getting old and purposeless.

But with the comeback tour round the corner he was back in the lime light, suddenly his name was everywhere, everybody was looking forward to see him and he left us. Can you beat that, the timing of his death? Right when the whole world was falling in love with his genius all over again he left us, left us in the lurch. After this day with all his oddities and imperfection, you’ll love him or hate him but you’ll never be able to forget him.

Michael Jackson is the kind of people urban legends are made of. I am an atheist but if there is a super being a little bit of that is found in such legends.

I would remember Michael Jackson as a living spooky mystery, something I could never understand and I think nobody could. As a child we used to whisper about his gender, is he girl or boy, is he black or white, is he homo or hetro, is he even for real or is he a figment of our imagination, a magical illusion, how come his voice is so different when he sings than from when he speaks and so many more mysteries about him. He was my first brush with western music, Snigdha laughs at me when once in a while I still play his greatest hits on my laptop.

Call this a fan’s blind faith but I always believed that there is more to even the child abuse charges that were brought against him. Truth is very contextual and then there is a good truth and a bad truth about which I wrote at the time of Josef Fritzl rape case. We think we know but we have no idea.

The man is dead but try denying it, there’s a little bit of him in all of our souls. Like there’s a little bit of God in us.

Heath Ledger Rest in Peace

Another name comes to mind is Heath Ledger. I don’t think anything he would have done for the rest of his life, if he lived longer, would have matched up to the Joker. It was not a mere performance by a movie actor; it was almost like a transformation of souls (even in Brokeback Mountain) their journey from one body to another. Heath Ledger gave his life and soul to Joker, Joker lived, Heath died.