A major(ity) problem.

I have a problem with democracy. Not the idea of it, which is not terrible, but the power of the majority in any cause.

Looking around the world, the majority in any cross section of humans are underachievers. The majority of athletes running in a race are losers, the majority of workers in a company are not geniuses, and the majority of us do not achieve anything great in our lifetimes. Ergo, if you belong in the majority, you are probably mediocre.

So, why does the majority get to decide things in a democracy, unless this is a blatant attempt to keep out geniuses who are bound to be in the minority? This is the best way for a lot of people to have to listen to a small group of very intelligent people, and this is a great way for dumbasses to feel good about themselves, having won in numbers what they could never win in merit.

But, the leaders we elect are also in the minority! There are very few leaders to a very large group of people and those few leaders are supposed to effectively "represent" their collectives. I must say, at least in politics, they do, to a magnified level of inaction and ineptitude, not to mention abject incompetence in most cases.

It is strange that the majority by an overwhelming margin, once believed the earth was flat. The minority was proved right then, and more often than not, I worry about what the majority believes. Even God doesn't have much of a standing with the minority, since the majority have major investments in their beliefs in such an entity.

Why is it that cold rational thinking eludes the majority, and only the minority musters up the courage to go up that alley? Would it be wrong, fundamentally if there were more people who were agnostic or atheistic, and the minority believed in all kinds of Gods? But the flat earthers and the God believers both being overwhelming majorities, I wonder what would happen if it was conclusively proved that there is no God. The minority would go, "Aha, we told you so", and the rest of society would create mayhem, just because they hate to be wrong.

The majority was the reason slavery was legal in many parts of the world, and the majority is usually guilty of the most stupid courses of action that humanity has taken. It is not a matter of pride to belong to the majority in any collective, and a win by numbers can most of the time, only be a mandate that we love to belong to the group most likely to be the dumber of the two.

So, how did we manage to pull off this con on the minority? Truth is, we haven't. The minority most of the time has enough mental resources to think clearly, manage their way around the stupidity of the (m)asses, and they don't really care about having power of intelligent, rational thought over the majority. The minority watches with pleasure as the majority kills itself with its own stupidity.

The richest people in the world are a minority, the most successful people of the world are a minority, and it runs across the board, the ability to stand out and strike out on their own. It is very rare that people who simply do as others do climb out of the majority mass. It is always those who "do not belong" in the collective that get the opportunity to fly higher and on a different plane.

Now, imagine the competition we would have on our hands if the majority was capable of excellence, and only a few were falling behind. It would be unbearable, and we would quickly up our standards so only a few of us would continue to stand out. So, is that where the buck is - in the standards we set? Of course it is. The communities, the countries, the collectives that have prospered and improved their standards of living are those that took the examples of the minority and quickly applied them to the majority.

There are a few people in India who actually use dust bins, do not spit randomly, do not break rules, and do not cause chaos in everything they do. The majority does not even notice. They're too busy following other fools.

So can we apply that to political choices we make, and declare the BJP the more capable, intelligent party that has been denied the opportunity to excel by the majority? Most definitely not. The BJP succeeded in scaring the majority and created a mass fear of them. Fear of this nature spreads rapidly in the majority, since there are many carriers. Rational or not, fear has momentum, just like stupidity. So if you want to lose traction with the majority, cause them some fear.

The BJP should have kept it benign and comforting to the majority who wants to be in a slumber. Manmohan Singh is the more accommodating of a slumber compared to LK Advani. That guy might stir up something that we may have to really deal with. So, the majority chose the party that would give them the less to be bothered with. What a lovely thing this democracy is! And we have analysts for masturbating over thousands of details as if the majority really uses a fraction of human intelligence to make its choice!

The minority of humans actually produce, while the majority merely reproduces. The minority finds solutions, while the majority simply comes up with resolutions. The minority gets rich, while the majority gets to bitch.

How Low Can We Go?

If there is one incident that exposes national character, or lack of it, it is an attack on our soil. The Mumbai attacks provided that, and sure enough, all the dogs are baying for blood, as if things were picture perfect before those miserable 60 hours. But come upon us it did, and in grand style. The event itself was rather gruesome, and the media coverage made a mockery of journalism in the process of presenting "exclusive" specials! How the heck can anyone be excluded in the coverage of a terror attack of national importance?

In the aftermath, in the period of self examination that dutifully follows, the saddest story is that of supposedly bulletproof vests that police personnel wore that weren't able to stop bullets. It is one thing that they carry outdated firepower, but it is an entirely shameful thing that equipment that is supposed to protect their lives fails the very purpose it is there for. Further tests have proved that bullets do indeed pass through these bullet"proof" vests.

This cannot be anything other than a case of rampant corruption, with the manufacturer in cahoots with someone making purchasing decisions within the government of Maharashtra or the government of India. This is a blot on our national character if we aren't just making money illegally, but actually selling death to our own men in uniform, cloaked in an appearance of safety. Can we go lower than this? I'm now betting we can.

The logic of the culprits must be that police don't get shot at that often, so how is anybody going to ever find out if the damn vests are bulletproof or not? The supplier should be made to wear the vests he claims are bulletproof and shot at. That would be fair enough wouldn't it? After all, he should be able to swear by his product, shouldn't he? If he starts saying his prayers as soon as he is strapped into one of his own vests, he deserves to die.

We're fighting an enemy determined to bleed us, because he doesn't have the balls to take us on face to face. There is no way Pakistan can defeat India in any scale of warfare. So, the conniving bastards have come up with ingenious schemes to beat every kind of protest India can lodge, completely absolve themselves of responsibility and have built every instrument of deniability they need to simply say, "Heck, we don't know who did this. Sorry"! And some of us are helping rogue nations like Pakistan kill our poor policemen by issuing vests to them that can't stop their bloody terrorists bullets?

Last night, close to where I live, there was a road accident. An older gentleman on a scooter ran into a dog, got thrown off his scooter and landed on his head, bleeding and going unconscious almost immediately. Of course a group of people came running to lift him up. I called 102 for an ambulance, which rang and rang till someone picked up, and before I could tell him where to send the ambulance, he was giving me two other numbers for the GH ambulance, which I was supposed to call myself. Now, what the f$#k is an emergency number provided for if it becomes a directory service in the moment of need? What is worse, nobody picked up the GH ambulance numbers! Low enough?

The poor man was moved to a bench at the side of the road in front of a tea shop of some sort. When I was busy trying to get help on the phone, one asshole starts giving out visiting cards, with the number of "his" ambulance service we could call. The son of a bitch didn't make one call from his cell phone, supposedly because I was "already calling", and never made a move to do so even after I told him I failed to reach an ambulance service calling the official number. What kind of inhuman gives out visiting cards to people at the scene of an accident trying to make a sale?

We are always ready to become a mob, and that is good when warding off very local threats, but I didn't hear Raj Thackeray unleashing his army on the terrorrists holed up in Mumbai! In fact the son of a bitch hid himself during the entire episode, while the chief minister and his deputy both made asses of themselves and promptly got thrown out of their pompous positions! In the middle of so much nonsense, Ram Gopal Verma paid a visit to one of the "location"s along with the CM and managed to kick up another controversy.

For some strange reason NDTV thought it necessary to give Ram Gopal Verma a chance to redeem himself before his country and he did a brilliant job of putting both his feet into his mouth! Like it was somehow important to give a movie director the chance to explain his presence at the scene of a terror attack when the embers were still hot, NDTV got Srinivasan Jain, who is coyly called "Vasu" by some of his equally incompetent colleagues, to interview this clown Ram Gopal Verma. He was stupid enough to say he came to meet Ritesh, the Chief Minister's son, to narrate a story to him, and since he was leaving somewhere in a hurry, tagged along to tell him the story in the car! Some story that must have been, considering how timely this one is!

It really could have stopped short of an absolutely mayhem on TV if he didn't say he simply tagged along and suddenly, unexpectedly, they were right behind the CM at the Taj hotel, walking over the wreckage of the attacks. When "Vasu" asked Verma if he understood how people felt about him being there, the fool went on to explain how it had already been declared a safe area so he never thought he did anything wrong by being there! I really thought it wouldn't get this low, when he went one lower. He didn't even understand the question! He didn't understand that a famous commercial, glossy, masala film maker like him showing up on TV would make people feel that this matter was being handled in a frivolous matter. Neither did "Vasu" have it in him to rephrase the question so the dope could understand, nor did the dope clear his ears to hear better. It was such a sham and a shame.

Being caught with your pants down is one thing, but there was nothing to prevent Srinivasan Jain from saying, "Look, it looks bloody frivolous when someone like you shows up where people have died in a highly publicised attack which is being referred to as an attack on India, okay? So, please understand that this is not going to go down well with people who are bloody mad at the whole thing right now. This has nothing to do with "safe area" and your bloody narration of how you got dragged to the spot, get it, dopey?!" But he didn't have the words. That's how low our journalism is. Down with our politicians, their actor kids, their stupid directors, and the whole lot of incompetent nincompoops.

Like this wasn't enough already, by their own low slogan "Enough is enough", NDTV keeps quoting Aamir Khan, like he is some icon of national unity. Even Sanjay Dutt has shown up on TV to contribute his share of "I'm angry" without talking a word about how he helped the cause by buying guns from the underworld that went on to bomb Mumbai not that long ago. We can't possibly choose someone less qualified, but then that is why we are India. We love the lows!

Okay, by now, we're ready to start going up, since we feel we have hit rock bottom, right? WRONG! Mr. Naqvi, spokesperson for BJP likens people who protest with candles and flowers to terrorists! Just like that! The CM of Kerala decides to pay a visit to a martyr's father's house and gets thrown out like he should be, but curses the poor slain man's father! R R Patil, the deputy CM of Maharashtra calls the Mumbai attacks a "small incident" and loses his job.

It cannot get lower than this, but we just might make it possible.

Barack Obama and America's coming of age.

Today, it has been all celebration, and rightfully so. Barack Obama today became the first person of African American heritage to be elected President of the USA. The significance of this shouldn't be lost on anyone following this exciting news. In over 200 years of the USA existing as a nation, and 389 years since the first Africans were brought to America as slaves to work on British colonies, this is the first time any person of colour has been bestowed the rare honour of being the country's leader and indeed occupy the seat of one of the most powerful people in the world.

Not only were the odds heavily stacked against him, he was also fighting to be elected in a time of strife for the USA, with two wars and a looming recession that the whole world has felt and reacted to, not too positively. But Obama, being the brilliant leader he is, ran a campaign that was so sophisticated and so inclusive that all the traditional Republicans and their think tanks were reduced to sideshows with no substance at all. The Obama campaign outthought, outmotivated, outspent, and completely outplayed the republican campaign and made them look like amateurs in a world of phenomenal professionals.

The romance of all this is indeed beautiful, and the whole world has waxed eloquent about the significance of this historic moment, emotional for a lot of people, and amazing for the ideals upon which America has always said it stands upon. Indian media has been very sharp, as representatives of the world's largest democracy, to present this spectacle in its colour, although largely positioning their reporters in liberal bastions where the story was juiciest, particularly after it became obvious that Obama was going to win and win big.

If there is one thing that is totally missing from all media so far, it is the mention that America the adolescent of 200 years of age has finally shown symptoms of becoming an adult, officially getting past puberty and coming of legal adult age. For all its greatness, America has always been a sum of its various interesting parts, and never a grown up as a whole. Now, finally, with this emphatic expression, thanks to youngsters and people who chose to stay awake, America has shown that it is not genetically flawed and is capable of adulthood and adult behaviour.

The greatest progress in America in any sphere has taken place in Blue states - those that traditionally vote Democrat. In fact, Blue states overwhelmingly overshadow the productivity of Red states, who sometimes seem to produce nothing but voting blocks and religious zealots who clearly should have no place in the twenty first century. Sarah Palin, scarily is from one such state, and this right wing nutcase who wants to legalize aerial hunting and thinks Putin is going to attack America over Alaskan airspace, did come perilously close to having her chance to be President!

At the time when India was getting its independence from the British empire, won with a non violent movement that still baffles humanity, segregation was legal in the USA! It was perfectly normal to expect a black person to be hanged without trial if charged with a crime, and the likelihood of a black person ever getting the same treatment as a white person was almost nil. To this day, there is a significantly larger percentage of black people in America's jails in comparison to their percentage of the nation's population, and there are still many, many places you can visit in the United States of America where if you are not white, you will be looked upon like a parasite fully worthy of nothing but suspicion.

Racism is as American as apple pie, and it exists in its ugliest forms in American people's minds. This is not to define the whole country by the actions of a few, but it is worth remembering as we celebrate and join in America's greatest political step forward. There are American parents today who are busy warning their children that their country is doomed to be taken over by Muslim terrorists because Obama became president. Earlier today, when John McCain was delivering his concession speech and congratulated Obama, his supporters were booing! Booing! That's how retarded some of these people can be. There are Americans who are scared to their bones by Obama being president, and for reasons that are uniquely American - usually prejudiced, baseless, and conditioned by an upbringing of ignorance and intolerance. That is not about to change anytime soon.

The balance may have shifted for now in favour of a more progressive America, but that doesn't provide the grounds for us to assume that America has done anything more than somehow endure its coming of age. To be fair, America has had in place for a while the framework for greatness, the structure to provide the opportunity for anyone to step up and take up enormously ambitious dreams. It provides for great checks and balances that carefully prevent the hijacking of a democratic system, and yet, it watched helplessly as Bush and co. systematically ran into the ground America's surplus economy, waged a war based on lies and treachery, gave no bid contracts worth billions of dollars to companies in which their politicians had vested interests, and ruined the country's reputation to the point where Eritrea and Solomon Islands might well be the most celebrated members of the Coalition of the Willing that the supermoron from Texas put together.

It is possible today to lead a life in America where you can do well financially without much of an education, you can buy enough insulation to never have to deal with a human being too much unlike yourself, and live a life of complete ignorance of the rest of the world. There are many pockets in the USA where people have chosen to do exactly these things and their vote could still decide which country gets bombed next. Driven by belief above knowledge, they have an icon in Sarah Palin who believes that dinosaurs and humans co-existed at some point, and these are the people that constitute 48% of the popular vote that Barack Obama did not win! (Imagining T-rex on Noah's ark still makes me smile in abject resignation!)

There was more negativity and cheapness from the republican campaign against Obama than there was any substance and dignity. Sarah Palin's attempts at linking Obama to a well known fear psychosis of terror, knowing fully well that this domestic terrorist is a university professor, should give us enough insight on the kind of people she knew she was addressing. These are the people who continue to pull the USA down to the stone age, and her "folksy appeal" is hardly directed towards any good folks who believe in hard work, abundance, and wonderfully universal concepts of brotherhood. Indeed, the biggest believers in Palin politics are more likely to be fear mongers and religious creationists who want to reject all scientific education, who do not mind being ruled by trepidation and suspicion of those "big city liberals"!

The fact that Republicans lost this election doesn't mean that America has gone beyond extremely conservative, narrow minded, fear driven, ignorant and prejudiced thought processes. America is by no means setting a great example for the rest of the democratic world to follow. Countries like India should smile and congratulate America for its bold step forward, like a special needs child of enormous physical power that has just uttered its first word.

The lesson for India from Barack Obama's success should not be the romantic, unsophisticated views that our Padma Shri winning journalists like Barkha Dutt seem to be so enamoured with inflicting upon us with Disney like sweetness. (The funny sideshow - the immature joy on Mira Nair's face last night as she spoke to Barkha Dutt to demonstrate exactly the limit of her understanding of American politics - nothing surprising coming from a filmmaker who makes a living out of trashing India for the viewing pleasure of white people.) The lesson for us is to trust our fundamentals and put more faith into our democratic processes. We never condoned racism, we never legalized segregation, and we threw enough clout around to kick South Africa out of the cricketing fraternity for practising apartheid, and we led the Non Alligned Movement. We are not an ideologically compromised nation to need to look up to "America" for any kind of direction.

We as a nation still occupy moral high ground, and we're only sixty one years old. Still, we should see the intelligence of Barack Obama in having to fight through mentalities that are centuries behind our people's. His positivity should be an inspiration to us. His unwavering energy and calmness should encourage some of us to get engaged in our democratic processes. We should exercise our rights more, and grow up with awareness and courage, in much the way Swami Vivekananda has long since told us. It wouldn't take much to note that America still wants to be one nation "Under God", but India's founding fathers got way beyond human constructs and concepts of belief, while putting "Truth" as our highest ideal. Satyameva Jayate!

Gay Sex Immoral? Says who?

Says the Central Government of India, no less!

http://www.ndtv.com/convergence/ndtv/story.aspx?id=NEWEN20080066818

The Centre does not want homosexuality decriminalized! I wonder who the geniuses are who criminalized it in the first place! And now the Centre is showing its reverence to another archaic law.

{{"It (decriminalising homosexuality) may create breach of peace. If it were allowed, then evils of AIDS and HIV would further spread and harm the people. It would lead to big health hazard. It would degrade moral values of the society," Additional Solicitor General P P Malhotra contended.}}

Breach of peace? Oh, yes, this must be it! All the bombs going off must be due to our homosexual people really getting it on these days!

Big health hazard? To "the people"? It isn't as if homosexuals suddenly became "people", right? So, who exactly are we talking about here? Whose health? I would like to ask this moron if he considered urinating and defecating on streets very hygienic and uplifting to the moral fibre of our society. Surely those are not criminal acts?! Degrade the moral values of the society? - Why does this sound like it came right out of an essay competition in a government school? This is precisely the kind of sentence that would get kudos from incompetent slobs allowed to infest the mechanisms of institutions set up to reach idealistic goals without a thought for applicable truths.

This is precisely the kind of carpet under which the essence of India can get swept under, to be forever suppressed by moral policing that doesn't fool anybody but can hurt everybody. This calls for an outrage among all Indians who respect the Indian constitution and our fundamental rights. If we have freedom of expression, then this is an attack on our freedom of expression, no less.

Just because two people of the same gender express their feelings for each other through their physical act, how in heaven's name can it "harm the people"? Is it even conceivable that I look at two homos making out and I suddenly decide to pounce upon the nearest member of my own gender? What morals are we talking about here?

We have an Additional Solicitor General, no less, applying his value system to keep a law that already violates fundamental human rights? Doesn't this fool know India is a signatory to all the Human Rights Declarations in the world? Just because homosexuals are in a minority doesn't mean the rest of us have a right to make them criminals. Moreover, even if it was what is being claimed here, would criminalizing homosexual acts deter the birth of people who are oriented towards homosexuality? This is plain old interference and must not be tolerated at any level.

In fact, this is no different from criminalizing being handicapped! "Hey, look at that guy limping in public! Jail him!" People don't choose to be handicapped, you idiot! And they don't choose to be homosexuals or heterosexuals either. It is just the way we are who we are! Other people's sexual orientation, and indeed preference, if there were such a thing, should not become our business or the business of the government or any kind of collective.

This is not a matter that should be legislated, leave alone enforced. Just because it may be embarrassing to some of the old fashioned coots in government, we cannot stop our country from embracing reality and moving on towards a just and equitable society. We just cannot get into these archaic and barbaric notions of good moral behaviour. We cannot be standing in the sidelines watching the rights of our countrymen and woman get trampled.

After all, we are a country that quietly practices dowry, bride burning, untouchability, casteism, cronyism, corruption, bribery, and various other forms of absolutely illegal, anti-national acts. Which act of homosexuality ever hampered another person's existence like any of these do?

{{Countering the contentions of the gay right activists, the government said that such behaviour is not a natural trait but a reflection of a perverse mind.}}

A perverse mind! I wonder how this guy knows! - How is the Additional Solicitor General even qualified to make a comment like this, leave alone a counter argument? Not a natural trait? If you say so, God! Who is this idiot in this position? A reflection of a perverse mind? Let's see whose mind is perverse here. People who want to go about their business without needless persecution or those who want them to lead secretive lives just to preserve their human rights?

The funny part is, I have never seen or heard of homosexual people anywhere in the world ever arguing for equality's sake that heterosexuality must also be criminalized! As far as I can see, they are not bothered by heterosexuality. So, they must have perverse minds! If they had normal, argumentative, politically sharp minds, they should be asking for this, shouldn't they?

{{"Homosexuality is a social vice and the state has the power to contain it," the government contended.}} A social vice? You mean like smoking and drinking and beating up the wife and gambling and all those silly things people do socially? So, it's no big deal, right? A social vice? Aha! All along I thought this was a moral issue! Sorry Solicitor General, I got all mixed up! For a moment, I thought you were being serious. Phew! Good one!

A Shout out to American women!

I have been following the American Democratic presidential candidate
nomination process closely and I predicted a long time ago (when I was
in Nepal last year) that Barack Obama would be the winner - putting
more into hope than into any intuitive process, but more than Obama
coming up ahead, I amnow glad Hillary is not going to be president.

Nothing do I have against a woman becoming president, but America
always seems to be picking women with a lot of male hormones for top
jobs. Be it Madeline Albright or Condi or Hillary, they are all women
who somehow want to walk in the corridors of male power, who want to
be in a playing field level with men, and hold no charm for me as
women in their own evolved selves.

On the other hand, I look at women who have held top jobs in India,
Pakistan, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh, and I notice none of these
eastern women ever competed with their "woman" status and begged and
pleaded to "make history" as Hillary did. It was pathetic to watch
someone who at once proclaimed she would be ready on "day one" to be
"presidential" and yet, repeatedly played the "woman" card! Hello?
Does she want to be the president first or does she just want to be
the first woman president?

There was an article in Newsweek a year or so ago, that spared no
effort while mentioning that India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Pakistan
were all British colonies in the same breath as the one that informed
the reader that they have all had democratically elected women as
leaders. It of course forgot to mention that the Brits elected
Margaret Thatcher a long time after India elected Indira Gandhi and
way after Sri Lanka elected Bandaranaike!

Neither Thatcher nor Indira Gandhi ever played the "gender" card in
their politics. Bandaranaike never even came close to it. In fact,
these ladies seemed to care two hoots about it. They were all strong
willed, articulate and could hold their own on the stage of
leadership. Indira Gandhi was far sharper at criticism and by far the
more enigmatic of the lot, but in a country that is supposed to
suppress women culturally, Indira Gandhi simply did what she had to do
as a professional, and everybody quietly followed their leader.

Hillary owes a lot of her notoriety to her marriage to Bill Clinton
but more importantly, she stood to lose from it as much as she gained,
if not more. It isn't easy to measure up to Bill Clinton. Fair
enough. But she rode that distinctive Clinton advantage as much as
she could. Sure Bill Clinton would have done a lot for any other
Democratic candidate had Hillary not been in the fray, but where does
that leave Hillary as the capable strong woman?

Quite simply, she is no stateswoman (or statesman!). She is a shrill
and manipulative product of Washington politics who can gleam once in
a while like a shiny automobile from GM that doesn't have to show its
lousy gas mileage in the commercial. She manouvers more than she
manages, she presents more than she professes, and she certainly tries
to win more than she tries to convince. She played victim on so many
occasions during her campaign, I doubt if anybody would use their
sympathy to vote for someone who feels so victimized to a position of
immense implications.

Sadly, I doubt if Hillary ever truly felt victimized. I think she is
crooked enough to see that as an opportunity to mark up her appeal to
morons who would fall for that. I think she is enough of an
opportunist to take advantage of something like September 11th and
uncouth enough bring a great nation down to its lowest undignified
stance in the name of going to war, every bit as much as Bush. No
doubt she would be a better candidate than Dubya, but then, who
wouldn't?

Hillary would have done much better if she studied her support base a
little more carefully, even if she wanted to manipulate them as she is
capable of. Instead of mud slinging Obama, she could have simply
refused to play dirty, and stayed above it all - that would have
brought out the best in her voter base, and won her admirers from the
Obama camp. Hillary has never come out swinging against the lobby
culture. She must know, atleast in a cerebral kind of way, that the
new generation or two of voters are sick of all the things she has
been bred in! Why did she choose to give us all a taste of what we
already know and do not quite care about?

Where is that self made American woman politician? If Arianna
Huffington can have so much fun being who she is - a woman, an
immigrant, and with a hell of a funny accent, why is Washington so
full of men? There is no excuse except that American women haven't
wanted to be there as much as we would like to see.

It isn't as if no American woman has ever been head of state. Janet
Rosenberg who hailed from Chicago was prime minister and later
president of Guyana. >>Her political career started in 1950 and she
held many positions. In 1997 her husband, Dr. Cheddi Bharat Jagan,
died, and she was chosen to replace the Premier who succeeded Mr.
Jagan as President. Janet was chosen as her party's candidate in the
following Presidential elections, which she won. Afterwards she
re-appointed the former President to the post of Prime Minister after
being sworn in as President. She was born as Janet Rosenberg in
Chicago and mother of two children. (b. 1920-).<< class="nfakPe">Gandhi, the leader of the Congress Party in India, which is now in power, is of Italian origin. She married Rajiv Gandhi when he was a pilot for Air India. Later, after Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, she
was quietly requested to assume party leadership and today she is
every bit Indian as anybody else. She is simply fondly referred to as
Soniaji.

I cannot believe there are so many countries in the third world that
have so easily ignored bias of gender, color and even national origin
while choosing their leaders. It is high time America got off its
high horse of presuming it is in some kind of position to advice the
rest of the world on freedom and civilized behaviour, while it can't
find one real woman to fill any post of real substance and example.

I cannot believe there are so many naive American men in positions of
tremendous power and influence. GW is a glaring example, which nobody
can deny, so we will leave him out as an exception. Look at the rest
of the stable and you will find a lot of asses, some mules, and a few
horses. Stallions, none at the moment. And this is an eight year
presidential term? All in the name of fighting against a bunch of
nincompoop terrorists?

My question is not - so the most powerful country in the world has a
bunch of idiot politicians. What's new in a democracy? My question
is - when the men have had such a long tradition of being in politics
and have trashed an illustrious past with the below mediocre present,
where are the American women to challenge their men and put them in
their right places?

There are any number of societies in the world where men are worthless
drunks and the women do all the work and manage everything. They
don't let their men boss over them, and don't take crap from anyone.
At the same time, they don't function like men. They are stalwarts of
dignity, and beautiful and feminine all the way. What is it that
American women seem to be so wary of?

I think American women are extremely beautiful beings, caught in the
stupid need to fight for their rights and be equal to American men.
Your men aren't such great examples, darlings! Why the hell would you
ever want to be equal to them!? Leave them to do their grunting macho
stuff, and simply take the quick path past them to tremendously
evolved planes. Leave it to them to catch up if they want to!

Seriously, if Hillary is the best you ladies can come up with, I'm
glad America is not ready for a woman president. I hope the roles
that you American women will choose to play in the century ahead will
have more to do with your own essential substance than having to play
within designs men put in place. America needs that, and the rest of
the world would love it.

Oh, by all means, vote for a woman, but please make sure she is woman enough.

Peace and love.

Anything to be proud of?

I am not proud of my country. I am not proud of being male, or tall, or any of the things I do not have any control over. Being an Indian is something I didn't choose, and in the event of having to belong to some country by default, I really didn't have any say. So, why even think about it? Besides, if I took up the luxury of being proud of my country, I would definitely like to think the obligation of hanging my head in shame comes with it when my country chooses to stand for something shameful.

Is there anything I am proud about? Probably not. I don't necessarily give any thought to the saying that pride can bring about one's downfall. I am just not bothered about being proud, that's all. It just isn't important to me to belong in any collective, and while there are sides I take in a sporting event, there aren't sides I wish to take at a level where my sense of belonging as a person comes under my own scrutiny.

Now, it is largely fashionable to be patriotic, just as it is largely fashionable to be idiotic. In a country of over a billion people, intelligent consensus is often impossible, and just looking at the diverse mix that India is, any sort of consensus is nothing short of a miracle. I would think we do fairly all right as a country in some respects, but there really is nothing in the collective effort of us all being Indians that I would necessarily be enthused by enough to be proud of.

The idea of a nation state is an essentially flawed one, and deserves to be questioned in its essence. The boundaries that define a nation are mostly geographic, and are drawn not by considerations of ideologies, and certainly not by asking its constituents if they like what they will eventually end up representing and belonging with. Most of us are just humans who happen to belong to some nationality and we should never have to carry the guilt, responsibility or pride that is imposed upon us. This isn't a choice we should have to make and a world without a nation state concept isn't a new concept either.

Being a nation, however, isn't without its advantages. It is hard for each of us to maintain defences strong enough to protect everything we would like to protect. So, we all pool in our resources, create the opportunity for people to serve in the army, navy or air force, and prop up enough equipment to deter, threaten, or unmotivate an enemy from attacking us. This is smart collective thinking, but again our sense of belonging under the flag of a "nation" is just brilliantly convenient for this purpose. It is perhaps just as well that fighting for the country is more likely to motivate our brave soldiers a bit better than fighting for a more nebulously defined collective, no matter how much more truthful.

How about the whole world getting together under ONE collective and ignoring all boundaries between us as humans - geographical, ideological, even spiritual? The more we share resources and the more we fight for some, we are being inevitably pushed towards this ideal, but more and more, our leaders are falling short of calling the bluff of the last few centuries and are buying even more strongly into new states and countries! Yes, we elected those leaders in many cases, but then again, that is not something I am proud of. Why is it that we still vote for people instead of voting for ideas? Shouldn't we be allowed to merely vote for - "spending money on education" against "spending money on the military" and forcing whoever is elected to simply obey what we have chosen?

Democracy - the least lousy system we humans have come up with in order to govern ourselves, is the most benign way of the weak keeping the strong down. In a system of natural selection, about a tenth of the population of the world today would have survived and would have the intelligence to live a good life without endangering any of the resources of this planet. But we somehow conspired to subscribe to a system that lets the unfit thrive because of compassionate considerations, however dishonest those may be. As a result, we have an overburdened planet, fools with the ability to slow down life for the really smart ones amongst us, and hence retarding the highest levels we can aspire for as a race.

My race! Again something I am not proud of. But I am reasonably happy to belong to the human race. It has potential. It has a remarkable ability to survive and improve, and build upon the improvements of others in the race. That is a huge plus. I definitely do not want to invent all the things I would love to have! For my fellow beings, I am willing to give myself. For another human being, I am willing to batter and bruise myself. I am willing to yell myself hoarse so something I have found may reach that one ear that might be able to use that information. But perhaps this is also something instinctive, something so primal that I have no control over? It doesn't matter. Somewhere, somehow, some human beings seem worth the trouble of caring for!