The Bane of Banning Books.

I'll tell you something right now, that I can bet you wouldn't know.

I place this bet with such confidence because not many are languishing in front of their laptops at 11 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and even those who are, there is just a Lilliputian chance that you have been surfing sites regarding books for over an hour.

So, this is what I have learned.

(And what I completely missed, but my bibliophilic intuition adhered to unknowingly!)

September 25th to October 2nd was Banned Books Week.

It is celebrated in the U.S., a country where high school students would have to think for a minute whether college is spelled with a double 'l', but so what?

It celebrates the freedom to read. :)

Books such as "The Colour Purple" , "Catch-22'" and "The Catcher in The Rye" found their way to this outrageous list because they contained offensive words, sexually explicit scenes and inflamed certain religious sentiments. 

I finished reading the latter by the end of September, and it was such an amazing read. A story of a bewildered teenager, wishing he didn't have all the knowledge about society he had. The protagonist, who lost his innocence about money, sexuality and school does not wish the same upon others and matures through the end of the book. Catch 22 is a historical satire following the story of Yossarian, who tries to understand the self-contradictory circular logic in the military, and the world. The Colour Purple on the other hand, deals with the life of a young African American woman, a victim of rape and physical abuse.


1984, the George Orwell classic had been banned for its account of a totalitarian society, which was considered unsuitable content for impressionable minds. I am reading it right now. Gone with the Wind, The Call of the Wild, Lolita, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest... For god's sake, even Goosebumps and certain Roald Dahl books have found their way to being banned!

These books are considered as gems of English literature and all regularly feature in lists of the best English language books ever written. 


Back in Mumbai, Rohinton Mistry's "Such a Long Journey", a Booker-prize shortlisted book has been banned. 
By a political party who spouts baseless and ridiculous religious propaganda every voting season, and by a spineless Vice-Chancellor of Mumbai University. And most sadly, by a 20 year old politically-backed-and-brainwashed Bachelor of Arts student in a prestigious institution, who could have chosen to really do something useful with his life.
This, in a country, that has the words 'liberty' and 'secularism' in the Preamble of its Constitution.


Sometimes, I just fail to understand the workings of our society. How are these bunch of morons allowed to become politicians, and our representatives in the government? How is a fictional character in a fictional book using expletives an issue? I can name ten other books by Indian writers that contain offensive language and unsavory reviews of politicians. Does highlighting a few vernacular expletives and paragraphs in fluorescent marker pen allow you to become a literature Nazi and deprive others from reading a superbly written novel? And keeping all this aside, HOW do they even take themselves seriously?

Correct me if I am wrong, but these are exactly the kind of people our country does NOT require.
I am going to get myself a copy of the book as soon as possible now!


P.S. This Friday, I am going for a Pearl Jam tribute gig at B69. My first 'gig'. I am so excited! :)


P.P.S. Twilight also features on the list of banned books. Now THAT was a good thing. :P

To Answers, wherever I may find them.

Will I visit this place in my lifetime?

                                                      Stockholm Public Library

Is wanting to live in this beautiful Norwegian home asking for too much? 

To be happy or to be successful?

There are those who think happiness is overrated. 

They are the ones who don't understand life at all.

If that makes me selfish or an objectivist, so be it.

My life. My terms. I want happiness. Lucky for people, I find happiness in the smallest things.

These aren't the questions I meant to ask here. 

They were (a little) more important than these ones.

I've been feeling apprehensive about my future of late. 

What do I really want to make of my life? 

Will I able to make a difference? Bring about a change in attitude, circumstance or ideology?

There is so much I want to do. 

I want to drive change, influence and engender passion. I don't want to be just one of the many with a high-powered executives with a prestigious job and hefty salary. I really don't. I would much rather earn a smaller income and do something more substantial in my life.Yes, I know how many reading this will think of the immature idealism underlining this statement. You will probably read it with the stinted hollow of the dubious.

To be honest, as I write this, I am thinking the same things.

The impracticality and impossibility of it all.

I hear people talking about leaving the country and never looking back. I hear all the rationale for getting a good job somewhere and being 'settled'. And the funny thing is, that also makes sense. A lot of sense. That might just be what I end up doing with my life.

It's just that the idea of being 'settled', implies a certain amount of complacence and satisfaction with what I see around me. 

There are so many things I'm thinking of right now and unable to frame coherently into a sentence.

For lack of a better way to put it, I would always like to be somewhat dissatisfied with what I see and what I do. Or else, what is the point of it all?

I have completely forgotten the point of this post. Tell me if you find one.

10.10.10

A bright shiny day, with an interestingly symmetrical date (which is of no consequence at all), except that my exams begin day after tomorrow, India is performing pretty well at the CWG and it is Ragini's( my 13 year old neighbor who I've known for almost ten years!) birthday.

Since I didn't have the time to make her a card, I'm just going to wish her here to make up for it!

Happy Birthday, Ragini!! 

Here's wishing you soooooooo much happiness and luck.

Love,

Bunny and Sana. :)

Trimester Ends.

Fun fact: I always associated the word trimester with pregnancy before college began.
And sometimes, it still feels that way.

The first trimester is a time of profound changes, and everyone experiences these changes in their own unique way. Excitement and fatigue. Anxiety and hope. Junk food sprees and the subsequent weight gain. The coffee craving. The occasional mood swing.
That's common to both the blushing newly-pregnant woman and the outgoing college kid, don't you agree?

The first trimester of my first year in college ends today.
It's eleven in the morning. Yes, you guessed correctly, I bunked. Who attends two lectures of Sociology in sweltering October heat on a Saturday morning, anyway? :P

Exams start in three days.
Can I call myself prepared?
Not by the farthest stretch of even Shakespeare's imagination!

Even Elvis and Pearl Jam are unable to make bivariate linear regression(Whaaaaaat? :O) somewhat interesting.
Am I doomed or am I doomed?

But oh, look!

08 OCTOBER 2010

Guest Post: An Open Letter to a Stranger

This new guest post is brought to you by Nitisha; a fellow writer and blogger. She is a great writer who recently sent this post as an email submisison. Don't forget to submit your guest posts to jhaish09@gmail.com. Check out Nitisha's Open Letter to a Stranger then check out her blog here.

Here's the story.
I sent Jessi, the super blogger on The Musings of a Wannabe Star(having 1109 followers, not to miss!) my blog-post "To a Stranger" a week ago, and she actually posted it on her blog!! Check it out at http://jhaish.blogspot.com/2010/10/guest-post-open-letter-to-stranger.html
Exciting, right? :)

Guess there is something nice to be found in the worst of situations.
A pearl in an oyster, the end of a trimester.

Later. :)

War: The Wrong Answer

(All characters, countries and events appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Or not. It's up to you.)

War can looked at in two ways- The religious and the objective. By going to war, we are challenging God's authority, by destroying something he had created. Or we could see it like this. The world is around four billion years old. What with all the nuclear war weapons, it could end in a second.

(I'm not religious. I'm also an atheist. I don't get the point anyway.)

XYZ was a completely medieval society. They had less money, less food, less resources and smaller bombs. They were, for the most part, a gentle, God-fearing and peace-loving people .However years of battle have stripped them off these very characteristics that distinguished their race. Young boys play with guns, girls dance to the tunes of bombing in the vicinity. Most of them orphans, they have not even experienced the comfort of family life. They are growing up in a society that has been devastated and ravaged by war. They are growing taller in a society where innocence, tenderness and ingenuity hold no meaning. Now the people no longer know how to treat their own people; killing, stoning and brutalizing has become the norm. The country's foundations and the cultural tenets it upholds are crumbling to fine dust by the second.

A certain event was the harbinger of this change in global power relations.

It involved aeroplanes, skyscrapers, suicide bombers and several shivers down one's spine.

Moreover, who were the bombers? Ordinary people whose absolute belief in a cause overrode their natural instinct for survival. They were but ordinary men who were manipulated and thoroughly brainwashed by very influential people. False promises of paradise after death were the seeds of the utter devastation they wracked. Yet ABC, one of the most well- educated nations in the world, failed to understand their pathetic situation and chose to retaliate with vengeance.

Terrorism, as I see it, is any act that spreads a feeling of terror or endangers the basic freedoms of people. That is exactly what the great state of ABC has done. It has plundered XYZ of all his wealth and integrity. But more importantly, it has sent out a very strong message. That it can do whatever it wants with the peoples of the world, and get away with it. It is taking for advantage the fact that it is the strongest, most powerful nation on earth. As aptly written in the essay ‘War is Peace’, ‘Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements - or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognized government.’

The war has altered the very meaning of life for many. In XYZ, living has become just as scary as dying. In ABC, obesity, of ALL things, is the greatest threat to survival. Why doesn’t this superpower just use commonsense for once, and realize that it is futile to destroy an already destroyed land? Dropping bombs will only shift around some debris, dirty up graveyards and bother the dead. The idea that the world can be ride of evil doers and terrorism with more violence and cruelty is just absurd. Something even Einstein or Newton would not be able to bend their brains around. So why not they just start learning to love people of weaker nations and unlearn hating and ruling them?

And there I thought "change was all we need" was something that would be followed through.

War still on? Yes. Change? No.

War, and in extension, violence is not the opposite the peace. 

So, it cannot possibly be the correct answer, can it?

All that was.

It's only Tuesday. The week has just begun. Yet I find it easy enough to say- I've had a rough week.

I don't want to talk about it. Not here, at least.

My issues are completely irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, right?

The Commonwealth Games are sprinting towards disaster. Snakes are being found in hotel rooms. Stray dogs sleep on the king-sized beds within the Village, politicians sleep on king-sized beds in the comfort of their mansions.

Verdict on the Babri Masjid title suit is to be delivered by the Allahabad High Court on September 30th. Pathetic how a case with such easily identifiable culprits has languished in lack-luster courts for almost eighteen years.

Aaah, life.

P.S. I finished a 4.5 kilometer marathon on Sunday.:)

P.P.S. Dealing with 'writer-rejection/inadequacy/what-made-me-think-I-could-write-so-well-anyway/why haven't I started studying yet/why don't I have a job yet' syndrome.

Yeah, not the best syndrome out there. :-/

I Spy :The Elevator Edition

How many times have I traveled by an elevator? Uh, somewhere in the range of a million? I currently reside on the 12th floor, so there's that, then college and malls and airports, the list is long, and honestly, dull.  But that does not stop me, (does anything? :P) from making a few observations on that, on average, 35 second lift ride up or down.

 You might not even know the name of the person standing ten inches from you, (quite the friendly neighbor, I am) but still: You know what he's reading;  his cologne(or its lack thereof) ;  his taste in music coz of course his iPod's volume is turned up high enough that your eardrums are revolting : his cell-phone's ringtone and why will it be anything but 'Tera tera tera suroooooor" and you will surely guess that he's had aloo parathas with spicy chutney for lunch. Whoever first called India the land of spices said it from 'stuck with an Indian in a closed space' experience! 

All at once, it's weird yet completely normal. Here we are, two complete strangers stuck in a closed box for less than a minute and yet we part knowing more random details about each other than many in our friend circle. To think, this is when we haven't even exchanged a single word. 

Move to "Hello" time. The inevitable(not always, ironically!) conversation starter.
The sharp divide between Introverts and Extroverts is a lie. So is the divide between 'tomayto' and 'tomahto', the Montagues and the Capulets, the bibliophiles and the comic book readers. All the people in the world can broadly be divided into two kinds of people- People who chit-chat in an elevator,  and those who don't.

You know the drill if you're in the latter group.  Aimlessly play around with your cell-phone, check your hair if there are mirrors around etc etc. Aaah, the silence does carry the acute weight of discomfort and just waiting to get the hell out! Neutered of even basic conversational skills that I am, the elevator ride just makes me feel the sheer inadequacy of these silly social skills. And, if you fall squarely in group 1, then you absolutely have to make eye contact, fake- smile and nod a silent hello, and wait for Aunty to ask, "How is college?" or "Where is Mumma these days?" before you ask, "Aunty, I haven't seen Pappu in the longest time!" or "Thanks for the lasagna you sent over, it was yummy!"

And oh, how can I even forget the drone of Kenny G elevator music .3 times a day, aaaaaaaargh, I've had enough!

Is it time to get all "I'm going to be a health freak" and take the stairs?

Yeah, we'll see how that goes. :P

P.S. In India, an elevator is called a lift. In case you're not from the country and are wondering why people are waiting for a car to give you a ride while waiting in the line for the elevator. :P

A Product of GM Technology

2 X chromosomes in my brilliantly unique double-helix DNA structure, have not Ms. Nitisha Pande made.
After countless hours of research and diligent deliberation(uh, two and a half minutes human time), a conclusion has been reached.
I can now say, with much pride, that like the infamously banned BT Brinjal and the government-sanctioned BT cotton, I am a product of the technology, pedants like to call Genetic Modification.

Wikipedia goes on to explain what this is- 'Genetic engineering, also called genetic modification, is the human manipulation of an organism's genetic material in a way that does not occur under natural conditions.' It goes on to use words such as recombinant DNA and mutagenesis, but blah blah blah, I don't get any of that. (Haha, no one understands these words, really. Einstein, the only person who could, died long ago.)


I use all this scientific jargon I know not much, if anything, about for a reason. As I stayed up last night, reading Red Dragon, a thought struck me, as suddenly as it does every time. 


What has made me the person I am? What makes people who they are? Their experiences as a member of a family, as a member of society, as a student, a spouse? What events mesh into our psyche in such a way that they leave a definite and indelible impact on our minds, and percolate into every action.


For example. 
I hate cockroaches. Why? No clue. 
Did I have some crazy childhood experience with a cockroach? No. So that's not it.
Would I have hated them if I had lived in a not-so-plush apartment in Mumbai? Maybe not. 
Is it because I am a girl. And that in typical girl-fashion I hate creepy-crawlies of all kinds? I hope not.


So, where do our intrinsic values make way for the external environment's effects to kick in?
I'd like to know the answer to this.
So I can get some leeway in terms of getting answers. Answers I've been searching for all year.
(Of course, another answer I'm looking for is what role cockroaches play in the eco-system in the first place! :P)


Forever is composed of nows, someone had once said. Sylvia Plath or Emily Dickinson had said that, I'm not sure. I remember I'd read it some 4 years ago, and I thought it was one of the most poetic sentences ever. I still do. :)
The question is. 
What makes up my now? In this moment, who am I, and what has made me this person.


Yeah, us GEOs(Genetically Modified Organisms) live a life of utter confusion and near insanity. 
And let me tell you, looking for these answers in people, experiences and the internet, of course, is a pretty cool experience in itself. :)

Dabangg kills, Punjabi pop revives.

"I'm trying to find myself as a person, sometimes that's not easy to do. Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do,"Marilyn Monroe had once said.
I nod my head in firm assent.
BUT, I've been so unbelievably busy of late!
Economics Project, Effective Communication Project, writing the NMIMS Entrepreneurship blog, this, that and the other.


Irrelevant, of course. I should pay more attention to this little corner I proudly call mine. Apologies. :)


Of course, all this added co-curricular and academic pressure, has brought out the veritable monster in me.
Finicky, hyperventilating at the slightest delay, at the smallest inconsistency with the project at hand.
(I screamed at three team members today, UNAPOLOGETICALLY please note. :P)


Maybe it's the Dabangg effect. 
Yes, that is what I like to call it.

I was so disillusioned with 'Bollywood", film critics (IT GOT 4 STARS ON FIVE. Whaaaaaaat?), débutante directors and of course, action directors, script writers and the whole jing-bang, crass toilet humor, the surname Pande, that the burst of adrenaline(crazy frustration?) drove me to work on a project for 6 straight hours. So much so, that my eyes were blood red, my bottom was glued to the chair, my concerned father actually put down the laptop screen and my mother cooked my favourite-pasta in alfredo sauce only to get me alive and kicking again. :P




The only thing that kept me entertained. A certain steroid-muscled Mr. Salman Khan dancing to, 
"Jo sab ko paar lagawe re hai wohi dabangg
Daar ko kaate re, cheer dhare sanatte re
Jab veer bhare khunkhaare
Udd udd dabangg dabangg dabangg dabangg" 


That killed me.


Okay, back to being busy.

Which translates into dancing madly and wildly like a roadside drunkard to cheap band music that's playing ALL the time coz a certain Hindu elephant god festival is in progress. :D (Dancing to "Bolo tarararara" right now. Aaaah, Punjabi pop is such a mood lifter!)


India, I tell you. I love it. :)

Thoughtcrime

I feel like going away to a brand new city, maybe a whole new country and meeting a brand new set of people.Family and my 2 best friends run away with me, of course.


I feel like doing something productive and useful and important. I'm tired of lazing around.


I like 'elaichi tea' and green tea with lemon, more than coffee now.


I feel like finishing Anna Karenina. 


I feel like trashing noisy polythene packets for paper bags.


I feel like screaming at 95% of the people I see for being so mechanical and always looking for a leader to give directions.


I wish the BBA programme had as much practical interface with industry as I wished.


I wish I knew more than 8 girls who aren't superficial bimbos and more than 10 guys who aren't slackers.


Oops, the above make me sound like a nerd. A pedant. A hippie. A snob. A pretentious buffoon. Uncool, maybe.

In the society I'm in, saying all this out loud is like a crime.You say anything like this and you are immediately categorized into one of the above slots.
 No one really wants to 'think', no one really wants to 'change'. They are comfortable in the predictable and the familiar. They are comfortable living the stereotype.

Oh, Thought Police, I surrender. 
Punish me for thinking. Really. Coz I would much rather think all this aloud than not think at all.


 "Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime is death."
-Winston Smith in 1984, by George Orwell