Friday
ok, (EXPLETIVE) the bandh cost the nation Rs 1,000 crore. Bombay lost Rs 130 crore.
In other unconnected news, the Supreme Court finally fined the companies that defaced fragile rocks along Manali-Rohtang Himalayan pass with their gross advertising. (Yeh Dil Maange More, Thanda Mathlab Coca Cola and other such nauseating homilies).
The sum is Rs one crore for all eight companies put together. Pepsi will pay a measly Rs 15 lakh, Coca Cola pays Rs 30 lakh.
AT LEAST they HAVE to PAY.
I've done a lot of serious reading today and I stumbled on this comment by Rushi Desai on his sister's blog and it made me laugh out loud. Ya HA HA HA. (notice how i convey mirth without even the hint of a smiley face)
"I think terrorism is a very good profession. There are tremendous opportunities all over India and the west. Pak terrorist schools offer great scholarships (RAs, TAs as well as fellowships). And when you build your own startup (tashreef-e-izrat-kabri) you get infinite VCs to fund you and provide equipment and offices. When you start your operations, any small success is blown up by external marketing people (NDTV, et al) for free and then you get value-added resellers (Sena, VHP, et al) who take your tiny product convert it into huge ones and distribute it nationally."
I have a problem with smiley faces--i mean the web generated little yellow circles and variants thereof. They're really annoying. Please stop using them in the middle of sentences or after every line. I beseech you. please.
Friday, September 27, 2002
Arundhati Roy can be too high falutin for me sometimes, especially when she says things like "i secede from the Union" and calls herself an independent republic. But I like her essay in The Guardian where she desconstructs "ANTI-AMERICANISM." It's a good read.
Friday, September 27, 2002
rediff.com: Bandh near total in Gujarat This story is a confirmation of the fact that the Gujarat riots were state-sponsored. If the state machinery is able to maintain law and order during a bandh,(after a terrorist attack by a fundamentalist Muslim outfit) why were they so ineffective during the riots? Because chief minister Narendra Modi told the police not to get in the way of Sangh Parivar men and the mobs. An Outlook story cites the deposition of a senior minister in Modi's cabinet who revealed what transpired at a meeting on February 27, the day before the riots began.
"The minister told the tribunal that in the two-hour meeting, Modi made it clear there would be justice for Godhra the next day, during the VHP-called bandh. He ordered that the police should not come in the way of "the Hindu backlash". At one point in this briefing, according to the minister's statement to the tribunal, DGP Chakravarthy vehemently protested. But he was harshly told by Modi to shut up and obey. Commissioner Pande, says the minister, would later show remorse in private but at that meeting didn't have the guts to object.
It's appalling that Modi is scot free, conducting a Gaurav Yatra. How can he still be chief minister? It fills me with dread-- feel like we're all just tawdry pieces of tin stuck in this rotten morass.
Friday, September 27, 2002
Thursday
I want to know who invented the bandh as a form of protest. It has to be the most nonsensical way of protesting against a terrorist attack. Terrorist attack occurs, political parties call for the country to stop dead in its tracks--suspend trading, working, shopping, travelling. Railways cancel reservations, return fare to passengers. All shops shut, quaking in fear of the Shiv Sena goons. The loss in terms of money runs into crores. My office arranges for elaborate pick-up routine just to get us to work and edit a few stories. Lion looks so worried as I leave for work. I get to work and read agency stories about how the bandh was largely peaceful. The parties will actually garner some political mileage out of this--successful bandh. What is the point? Who are they punishing? Are the terrorists going to feel bad and repentant because we had a bandh?
Thursday, September 26, 2002
Monday unpacking Could this be me
building a new home
near blue water?
Other roads long forgotten
like vapour,
drift away.
I wave.
Let them go now,
they’ll form clouds elsewhere.
