Welcome to the MAD mad World!!

Have you ever felt that unstoppable , yet unsatisfied urge to make a difference? To change your world as you knew it by changing someone else's world as they know it? Then "MAKE A DIFFERENCE" is what you need to do.. welcome to the MAD mad world...!!!!

A year ago, I was lost in the crowd and the noise of my life with this thirst "to serve" unslaked and strong just as yours. And then MAD, happened.. Make A Difference happened :) All it asked of me was two hours of my life every week, teaching English or Computers to underprivileged children and what it gave me was a whole new world of meaning, satisfaction and joy. I have with me a lot more than I did when I walked through the doors of MAD. It taught me the real meaning of nirvaan through my MAD mad kids and embarked me on an adventure in realising myself. The world appeares more beautiful from that day.

As I complete my year long journey with MAD I would love to bring the MAD shine into all your lives too. If you have ever felt the way I did, if you have it in you to Make A Difference, if you know that you will Make A Difference and if you think that you need the Difference, then please do join us at our recruitment drive on the 9th of May 2010. You can  register at http://makeadiff.in/join/registration.php and change your life like you never knew it! :)

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P.S Apart from joining as a teaching volunteer you can opt to join the administrative bunch of Make A Difference as an intern. Any creativity, skill and determination can always Make A Difference!

Honour Killings: a predicament to the term

Honour killings can be defined as the killing of men and women by their kin or other members of their caste to supposedly safeguard the honour of their family, community or caste. Hundreds of men and women are murdered in India every year in the name of “honour” and it is very difficult to get a precise number on this phenomenon owing to the fact that most of these murder cases go unreported and the perpetrators unpunished. This so happens, due to the absence of witnesses and the large number of perpetrators which in most cases include an entire community justifying themselves on the grounds of “honouring the caste, community or family”. Hence, it is very difficult to reach in a conviction in cases relating to “honour killing”.

Caste, Community and family rules play a very important role in the life of a common Indian civilian. However, its role although very traditional and original to the Indian culture has made its evil manifestations of which “honour killing” is just one form. Most of the honour killings centre round issues of inter-caste marriages. Runaway marriages, relationships between people of different castes, the bride marrying a man from a lower caste and in some parts of northern India marrying within one’s own gotra are considered justifiable reasons to kill man and woman for having supposedly stained the honour of the group by doing so.

Most of the verdicts of honour killings of men and women are delivered by so-called caste panchayats or informal courts which is a self-proclaimed body comprising only of a few male members of the particular caste and deciding all issues concerning them. In these courts, the guilt of the boy and the girl are simply presumed and it is merely the quantum of punishment that is assessed. They function in oblivion to the realm of established law or the local legal court and villagers in most cases give more importance to the judgments passed by the self appointed courts. The leaders of the self-appointed court wield as much power as is necessary to keep the police away from village politics and in many cases the bodies of the victims are dumped and the police are never informed.

There is a general false notion that honour killings affect only women. However, the reality is that men are as much a victim of this phenomenon as women are and sometimes the more harassed of the victims. Hence, this is not a social issue which should be tackled from the point of view of women empowerment alone, but one that should be considered an evil against the entire humanity. There are many Indian grooms who have lost their lives in the hands of the bride’s father or brother. One such case is that of Geeta Rani of Hoshiarpur of Punjab who married Jasveer belonging to a different caste. A group of men belonging to Rani’s caste cut off Jasveer’s hands and legs and then killed him for having the audacity to marry one of their women.

Honour killings are most rampant in India in the northern states of Haryana and Punjab and in western Uttar Pradesh. Although most such crimes go unrecorded, according to a survey conducte by AIDWA, it was found that in Muzaffarnagar, the worst affected district of U.P, 13 cases of honour killings were reported in the first nine months of 2003 , up from ten in 2002. I hope that only reveals how much closer the Indian legal relief system has become closer to the masses and does not camouflage behind a proportionate increase in the actual number of honour killings. Around 35 couples were also declared missing during this period. It is quite devastating to relaise that this phenomenon most common in villages, has found its way into the economically, educationally as well as technologically progressed city life. A perfect example maybe the case of Subhash Chander, living in Chicago, who killed his daughter Monika, son-in-law Rajesh Jhambh and grandchild Vansh in their Oak Forest apartment merely because his daughter had married a man of a lower caste. In 2002, an FCI official stabbed his daughter to death at Mohali for a similar reason. According to a survey done by the Delhi-based Indian Population Statistics Survey (IPSS) in mid-2007, in India almost 655 homicidal cases have been registered as honour killings.

 There is a strong need for urgent measuresto be undertaken to kill this devil before it eats into the very existence of free human life in India. There is a need for strong legislations to be enacted against this heinous offence. It is quite ironical that there be a fatal threat posing on the choice to be young and to marry in the world’s largest democracy. At present there is no specific law in place which addresses this offense. The same sections relating to murder and homicide are applied to cases of honour killing as well. There need to be a definition of this offence in our books of law and most importantly, the effective implementation of the same. There should be a ban on the decisions of the kangaroo-courts that have taken the lives of many. In a recent case, the Karnal Court of Haryana has, by a landmark judgment awarded capital punishment to five persons and life sentence to one for murdering a couple in the dictated of a self-syled community panchayat  for marrying against societal norms. One step forward, we need to take many leaps more to wipe out this evil from the veins of Indian culture.

The Reason

My thoughts run wild, it hopes and pants

Slake its thirst did none, except my heavenly father.

No clay pot questions the potter of its shape,

But question did I the Lord, of my being.

An answer, A reason, I wanted for all

It took me a while to realise that god was no fool

He loved me a lot and wished me the best

Then why did I search for the answers on Earth?

Those answers, those reasons, those truths that I longed for

Lay uncovered for reasons their own

Blind belief I repose in my Lord

Then why question his acts ever justified!?

A panacea for broken hearts...

 Its not just the dream of a hopeful man

“Everything happens for a reason and the reason be God!”

You question the Lord when you fumble in faith

For the faithful one is the one who truly yearns for the answer

He dies not broken-hearted coz he knows the best of all...

That death be just the beginning

An answer to all those questions

The Reason for life unearthed!

my hatred for the human race!

Let me clear my attitude towards people before i start on my subject of good and evil. I love individuals, i like individuals, i personally do not believe in the emotion of hatred towards individuals although i may not enjoy being with every individual and i absolutely despise hatred towards a random group of people or towards an individual due to his belonging to that group. Because i think it is illogical to judge individuals on the basis of their friends or family or community etc:

However, i have had a general hatred towards the human race as such and this hatred traces its origin to my belief that given the circumstances, every man would sin. It is his fear of society, it is his fear of punishment (in the form of threat against reputation, imprisonment, death.. anything and everything) that makes him portray himself a good man. And this is why man lives in harmony with all other humans. I always thought that that man who did not commit even a venial sin in circumstance favourable to his sin is a good man and that no such man existed. Hence, every man is evil in the true sense of the term. And then i thought to myself.. would I kill a baby for a private benefit of mine even if i had all the circumstances in the world in my favour? And my answer was a very clear NO! Nd m sure that most of humanity would have the same answer. And then there were other moments were I thought that even the sins I was tempted to commit could be prevented by myself by my self-control... but how strong is this self control? Does it work all the time? Does it work for everybody? So, are most people essentially good? Or are they all bad? A question that haunted me for a very long time was answered when I read a book THE DEVIL AND MISS PRYM by PAULO COELHO. It was an absolute eye-opener!!! It gave me the answer which I had so often passed by in my own heart but never accepted because I like every other man would believe only that which he wanted to believe. I had spun a hatred for the human race as a defence mechanism for the harshness the world has done against me and I like every other man would illogically come up with rational arguments to fight and place my propositions at the ne plus ultra of the so called theory of realisation. But this book took me to the empyrean, that is realisation. It helped me realise the truth which lay in myself for so long and then reminded me of a little something a friend once said:

“ you have so many questions. Do not keep asking them. The answers are within you and when it is time for you to realise them it will come to you. Until then you will pass by it every day but you will not see it.”

When I began reading this book, although I strongly believed in my hatred towards human race, I hoped that this book would prove me wrong and I would taste ecstasy in realising how beautiful the people around me are.. and how beautiful I am. However my rationality would not quit. I still went ahead with an open heart, i turned the pages, it kept me going forever and made me feel for a few moments that man is good and then it led me into believing or rather realising that man has both good and evil in him. Every man had Good an Evil struggling in him and in some Good wins over Evil and in some others Evil wins over Good. No man is forever Evil, nor is any man forever Good. He has Good and Evil in him at all times.. it is the external manifestation of either one that outweighs the other and it is this manifestation that men can individually control. Some are good at it.. some fail. It’s not their inherent smartness that brings some the success over Evil, its just that they get lucky a lot more than the rest. And it’s not their inherent evilness that brings some to manifest the devil in their actions it’s just that they got a little unlucky or were more foolish.

So, today i leave behind my hatred for the human race and i love them for being human.. for being vulnerable to both good and evil and for, if not at “all times” at least for most times overriding the evil. It might sound to some that such a silly truth as this had to be taught by a book. But, the truth that each of us long for is as different as our fingerprints and this was a truth that always baffled me.

I stand to correction and this is a personal view! Time may mature me and take me away from these ideas but as of today, I stand in this faith. I look forward to growing in thought and this definitely is a very important revelation for me. Read the book and you will know! J

Aberrated

“Normal” is a word which cannot be defined by any individual.. However, it is a word to which every individual attributes his own definition and sets his own standards for. Who decides normalcy then? What is the measure for normalcy? Is everything that I do “normal”? Is everything that you do “normal”? Or is everything that society usually does, “normal”? And is everything that anybody does against my standards of normalcy “abnormal”? or everything that anybody does against your set standards of normalcy “abnormal”? And everything that anybody does against societal definition for normalcy “abnormal”? i think that the words “normal” and “abnormal” have quite often been used by all of us quite carelessly to emboss and taint the lives and expression of the self or individuality of many of our fellow social beings... It’s time to think.. I feel the best shrink that one can find to treat one’s problems is one self! Maybe somebody knows you better than you know yourself right now, but realise that nobody is capable of knowing you as well as you can... use your power and know yourself!! Know what is normal for you.. Know that natural is normal!
i think “normal” is anything that one does naturally. Anything that the force of nature in you makes you do is normal and anything you do in defiance to that could be abnormal. Anything that societal thoughts, peer pressure or idol worship makes you do is what is abnormal. But anything that you think for yourself and do naturally is what is normal and hence, normalcy is not a definition under which you could categorically classify some acts... but probably a principle easily and most comfortably acceptable when you are yourself and doing everything that comes naturally to you.. be it jumping off a cliff or declaring your sexuality, be it translating your thoughts into words or singing a song.. do what is righteous and that which is natural.. you will be normal.. you will enjoy life!  you would never have to use the cliche’ defence : “I am weird and I like it that way!!” Because.. nobody is weird, everybody is just themselves and that is normal!
I humbly stand to correction.

18, the age for LIBERTY?

18, the age for LIBERTY??

When I am 18, I shall vote! I shall decide who will rule the world’s largest democracy. Will I be mature enough to decide? “ YES, I will!,” at least that’s what Article 326 of the longest constitution in the world led me into believing during the pre-18 years of my life.

Now, I am 19, a year over 18. The Indian Majority Act 1875 tells me I am a major. I can vote, I can enter into contracts, I can finally possess a driver’s license and because I am a girl, I can enter into an absolutely legal wedlock. But, I still am not legally permitted to smoke cigarettes or consume alcohol for reasons unknown to me and right now do not actually interest or bother me.

But what perplexes me at the moment is the prescribed marriageable age for males that stand at 21 years as compared to 18 years for females. Talking about discrimination, we can see it against both the sexes: discrimination against the males by imposing unreasonable and unscientific restrictions on their marriageable age and that against the females that traces its roots to patriarchal traditions.

The most commonly voiced grounds for this age difference between both the sexes are maturity level, financial instability, population explosion and the resultant poverty. I strongly feel that the first two reasons are absolutely relative for one can be absolutely immature even at 25 or be financially unstable even after 30.Neither is there any biological proof to show that women mature earlier. As for population explosion, I would say that the imposition of such a law is the saddest way of birth control that our government could adopt. Scientific developments call for better means that do not impose restrictions on freedom.

The Law Commission of India has put forth a review recommending marriageable age of males to be lowered to 18 as well. It is pleasing to see that Article 14 is finally being honoured! Hoping to witness an amendment.

JAI HIND!

The National Language of India!

A few days ago an undergraduate student friend of mine and myself debated over the national language of India. DOES INDIA HAVE A NATIONAL LANGUAGE?

Many of my fellow South Indian friends as well as the other non-perfect hindi speakers would have had the "wonderful" experience of being ridiculed at some point of their life, by a fellow "educated" hindi speaking Indian for not being able to articulate in the language that they deem to be INDIA'S NATIONAL LANGUAGE. wake up call to all of you!

Articles 343 - 351 of the Indian Constitution deal with the official language of our nation and it clearly states that Hindi and English shall be the recognised "official" languages of our country and official does not mean national. It merely entails to the use of the language for any official government purpose. Hence, it is equally foolish to say that every Indian should know Hindi because it is his national language as it is to say that every Indian should know English because it is his national language.

A recent judgment delivered by a bench headed by Chief Justice S J Mukhopadhaya in the Gujarat High Court that India does not have a national language reaffirms this. The court furthermore stated that it maybe true that a majority people use the Devangari script and speak Hindi, but it still is only the official language of the country. The petitioner was Suresh Kachchadia (PIL in 2009).

Well, but that still leaves us with some food for thought.

WHAT THEN, is India's national language? :p

JAI HIND!