Kashmir – The Burning Valley

Kashmir – the place famous for its flora and fauna, conjuring natural embellishment and finest kind of embroidery. Dal Lake and Nagin Lake of Srinagar with their multi-faced ecosystems and grandeur can make the person to stand still mesmerized by the picturesque of Kashmir. However, the same pleasure is in abeyance with lots of ado in the valley since 1988. Kashmir has always been the centre of attraction for all the right and wrong reasons possible. Apart from the terrorism which is undoubtedly disturbing not only in Kashmir but in the whole world, there are prepetual wars, development issues, poverty and unemployment. Adding to the abasement of Kashmir’s is the poor standard of education in the valley.

The dispute of Kashmir started in 1947 when Pakistan strangled West-Kashmir with the hope to occupy the valley and so called Nehru government refusing to rescue Kashmir until the then maharaja of Kashmir asked for their help. But by then half of Kashmir was abdicated to Pakistan better known as Pakistan occupied Kashmir. In 1948, the UN suggested a plebiscite for the people of Kashmir which can be implemented after Pakistan vacates the occupied province which never happened. After the war of 1947 India fought another war with China in 1961 resulting a defeat and hence losing some part of territory to china which now is iterated as “illegally captured by China”. At this span of time Pakistan regrouped and attacked India in 1965 which ultimately proved fatal to them. After the number of wars that both countries fought, the loss was only of people living in those countries as war not only caused casualties but consequently leading to price rise and some unforgettable wounds.However, the hidden aim was to sabotage the peace that prevails in Kashmir. Though it proved to be unsuccessful at that time but it later came back in 1988.

Before 1988 Kashmir was peaceful but there was always anti-India feeling among them. The by product of this hate was the formation of Huriyat conference which demanded for autonomy for the state. The Shimla pact done between father of Dr. Farooq Abdullah and Father of Benazir Bhutto was also condemned by this organisation. The reason why I stressed on father is peremptorily on the fact of the involvement of ‘fathers’ in this dispute. Not to mention the present dispute is viewing son of Dr. Farooq Abdullah as the culprit of the blood shed violence. However, at that time the Intent was inevitable, there was the need of the support and the catalyst to the whole agitation. In 1988, the support came from Pakistan supported organisations and Catalyst was the murder of the Huriyat Chief in his house who was also the “maulvi”. These events were further exaggerated by the firing of the police personals on the burial cavalcade of the deceased. It created the panic and peril of riots was on everybody’s mind. And Hoping agaisnt Hope, the riots between Hindu (“kashmiri pandit”) and muslim occured in the valley which petrified the whole country. As a result, many kashmiri pandit left the valley and migrated to other places.

Not only the agitations but abject poverty in kashmir has left the children to leave the education and face the starvation like condition. No industry can dare to venture into Kashmir because of the terrorism and frequent wars and hence hampering the industrial revenue. The youth has become inept because of the falling standard of education. The unemployement has increased to such a magnitute that the youth is addicted to drugs and alchoal even if they are not earning a single peny.

This is a vicious circle of all the malignant events and the responsiblity lies on various state and non-state actors. The incendary statements made by several religious groups which led to arson and halt the peaceful life of people.The selfish interst of those parties and persons whose sole aim is to score a goal on the cost of several innocent lives.

Those voilent episodes of 1988 are brewing today with over 100 people killed in police firings, curfew on streets of Kashmir and stone pelting incidents. Though India is always considered to be a secular state even after an accord of two state theory i.e. Pakistan for Muslims and Hindustan which in itself is quite contradicting. However, the solutions to this abominated problem are to respect the sentiments of youth, religious sentiments and look for alternatives of the war with rational and honest mindset.

Sagar

Guest

Life is calling and I am at office!

The great Narayan Murthy whom I rever a lot once sent a letter to Infosys staff about ‘working late’. He doesn’t believe in working late(now you know, why I rever him) as this spoils the company culture and creates a lot of other problems like false satisfaction and inflated expectations.  I agree! Infact, I cannot agree more!

Narayan Murthy believes that most people stay late because of the coffee, surf, phone and other mind boggling facilities provided by the company. I sometimes wonder  that how magical this coffee must be!But having said that, there are people whom I know, who have somehow found their way out of these temptations and prefer leaving early.But guess what! India is a democracy!

You do what others do, else you are not a team player.Somebody in the team will plan your work, somebody else will assist you and somebody will drive you crazy. You need all of them and you cannot do without them. In nutshell, if you go by your team, you are going nowhere, atleast not your home. The poor Narayan Murthy disciple is still at office.

I agree that staying late spoils the culture of the company but what if it is already spoiled. This is a vicious circle and I am a part of it. My life is calling me and I am at office!

Goofy(Guest Author)

World is Huge!

World is huge! But that is not a problem. The problem is that we solved the problem.  Distance doesn’t exist these days.

In 490 B.C. greek messanger Pheidippides ran around 240 kms in a strech. His job was to ask for help and then to carry the message of victory. The greeks won over Persia but the messanger died  of exhaustion.The legend of Pheidippides inspired the modern day Marathon.

Had Phedippides been in today’s world, things would have been very different. He had to apply for passport, visa , book tickets, pay the hike in visa fees(Assuming that this time he will go to USA. ), go through immigiration check and testify that his name is not Khan. Will he inspire anybody this time? I doubt!

Goofy(Guest Author)

The art of getting misquoted.

Kapil Sibal is certainly the most sought after minister by Indian Media. And perhaps he is the most misunderstood too. Now his problem is that he has to battle two problems at once. First, every statement of his gets the limelight, and then everyone misunderstands it. Poor chap!

Recently he created a row to raise JEE cut off. But now he says that he has been misquoted. Now this has happened a way too many times for me to not draw any conclusion out of it.

So here is my conclusion:-

Mr. Sibal is a lawyer by profession. In fact he is a master of presenting cases which explains why every time when congress confronts an unrelenting quagmire, he is the one who comes to rescue the sinking ship.

This essentially proves that certainly, in most of the cases, he knows what he is talking; rather, he knows what he is mystifying.

Somebody please prove me wrong!

Goofy (Guest Author)

LETS LEARN TO MAIL……..

The fundamental source of poor email style is the practice of quoting the entire message you’re replying to. If that’s what you do, then it doesn’t matter whether you put your response at the top or bottom. In fact, if you’re going to quote the entire message, top-posting probably is better. But both are poor form.

Writing an email is like writing an article. Only quote the relevant parts, interspersing your new remarks between the quoted passages. Don’t quote anything at all from the original message if you don’t have to.

Forwarding is not replying. If you’re forwarding an entire message, sure, add your own remarks at the top, as a preface. But the idea that each new reply in a thread ought to contain the entirety of each previous message in the thread is silly, wasteful, distracting, and unnecessary. The point of quoting isn’t to maintain a self-contained copy of the entire thread in each single message; the point is to provide context for your own remarks.

Does it take more time to edit the portions of quoted text included in your reply? Yes. So does spell-checking and proofreading. It also takes time to shower and brush your teeth each day.

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HARINDERJIT SINGH

Express for ecstasy!!

Humans are social animals. No matter how fast the technology advances, giving us the facility to drop a line to other humans through our terminals to every nook and cranny of this planet, we will always require corporeal meetings.

Not only we require it, but we love it as well. We love to be with friends, to be in social jamborees, and to attend marriages. A joke cracked by a friend at a haunt is gazillion times better than the “best joke of the year” read over the web.

But as much as it is fun, it is challenge as well. To speak in public is not everyone’s cup of tea. Every one of us has felt these jitters. It’s an uphill undertaking to stand on the stage and speak in front of a teeming gathering. Neither is it easy to speak your heart out to your beloved.

If you talk to a professional, he will tell you dozens of tricks to overcome your problem of anxiety while in public. There are hundreds of books written on the same subject. All tell you the laws to abide by in case of such fretfulness.

But, I believe in incentives. Laws are always broken down. People don’t like to follow laws. If you want to make somebody do something, tell him the paybacks. Make him fall in love with the thing.

In case of public expressions the payback is the euphoria that one enjoys, the euphoria of taming your fear, the euphoria of pulling off inattention. You truly stop caring what other opinionate about you and you just listen to your heart, because, only now, you can. Now you have got inclusive control over your senses. They behave the way you demand, impervious of exogenous agents.

Above all, it increases your reach in the society, it makes you more social, and it makes you more human.

Goofy (Guest Author)

The power of Asumption!!

This is where I study and subsist.

And this is what we are drinking these days.

This place is called Jaypee University of Information Technology. As the name suggests, it is a University for technical education. I am a hostler, which means that I have preferred mess food, hostel rooms and bathrooms and college internet connection over paranthas and Chickens, PG rooms with attached bathrooms and “24*7” internet connectivity.

I have never calculated my IQ but my intuition and experience tells me that it’s fairly high. To cut a long story short, I am certainly a human being with above average intelligence (The average word is a bit ambiguous and misleading in nature. While talking average, it is very important to note that what the samples whose average was taken were. In my case the samples were hand-picked from NASA Research and Mathematics department. ), and thus there is certainly a very strong and cogent rationale behind my preference.

My decision serves me well almost the entire year barring the time when there are heavy spells of rain. During heavy showers the rains bring a lot of silt along with them, and that silt gets mixed with water flowing in the rivulets amidst the hills. These rivulets are the principal founts of water to our university and nearby villages. The filters fail to filter the silt, which most of the times is very fine, and hence muddy water gushes through them.

Now, you may say, that why I did not see it coming instead of my astuteness. Why did I not opt for a quibble free option? The answer is simple! There was no such option available.

But, even if it had been available, I would have not opted for it, because then I would have overlooked the power of assumption.

Confused? – Let me explain!!

This whole incident has made me realize that assumption is the most potent, insidious and ubiquitous belief on this planet. Had it not been assumption, life would have been insipid. After all, the water that you see on the screen is nothing but a quintessence of reverberations of assumption. Assumption made the colorless water colorful.

More confused? – Let me explain further!!

It all started, when our founders assumed that there is plenty of water around, and hence decided against water harvesting. It rains here in profusion, but we can’t harvest rain water.

Then, they assumed that a conventional filter plant would work fine in these conditions, undermining the convolutions of mountainous topography.

They further assumed that conventional water purifiers will do the trick here, too. The supposedly decontaminated water does not even suit bathing purpose. Look at the picture for further vindication.

Even our parent assumed the exorbitant fees as a reassurance for at least basic necessities. Itnaa Paisa liya hai – Pani to peene layak aata hi hoga!

And on the top of that, the managing committee is perhaps assuming that this mess will fix itself. It’s been three years, and the status quo is still maintained.

It’s ironical, how these assumptions which scientists and mathematicians use to simplify complex problems have actually complicated things here. However, assumption itself is insufficient to describe this behavior. It is an intelligent and fancy word euphemistically used for shying away from responsibilities.

It becomes even more perilous when people start turning their blind eyes to grave issues which could decide the fate of humanity. Water crisis isn’t a pity parochial issue of our college. It’s pervasive. It’s omnipresent and so is the penchant to assume. We assume that water crisis will not affect us. Water harvesting measures are assumed as profligacy. Nobody wants to accept the reality, nobody wants to fight. It’s not about foreseeing anymore, now it is just about seeing – and acting.

Goofy (Guest Author)

Movies

movies

It all started when Eadweard Muybridge under the sponsorship of Leland Stanford successfully filmed a horse named “Sallie Gardner”. That was nineteenth century and the year was 1878. The entertainment industry was on the cusp between live entertainment and recorded entertainment. In retrospect, one realizes that this miniscule event changed the course of drama centric entertainment.

Today, movies are the most congenial and preferred source of entertainment. I have got many friends who get cerebral paralysis, when are asked to conjecture anything except celluloid for entertainment. I often doubt that, perhaps, they are not cognitively evolved to think in any other direction. Their stereotypical, run of the mill idea of fun is certainly nauseating, but, more than that, it is thought provoking! It perhaps, manifests the alarming penetration of movies in our routine life.

Since our generation is abounding filmy freaks, the entertainment industry is leaving no stone unturned to make the most of this development by providing endless procurement of money making objects, euphemistically called as movies. The upsetting part of the story is that all kind of feature films cost the same to the end consumer. With bad movies significantly outnumbering the good movies, the end result is a pool of cinema epitomizing a lethal conundrum.

But, unfortunately this confusion is not palpable to many of us. We are quite pleased with our disparaging skills and deem ourselves intelligent enough to steer us out of this pool of anarchy. The truth is that, however, most of the times we fall for these ruses and end up with disappointments.

But, look at the brighter side! This clearly proves that we are a sanguine race. Even after watching some thousand self proclaimed comedies with few imbecile characters repeating the same godforsaken idiocies, our families fall for these cons masqueraded as family movies. Just some smart repackaging is enough to revitalize their enthusiasm and provoke them to go for the new bait.

Our love buds watch every damn love story hoping to learn tricks and trades of this arena. The last trick learnt from the last movie fell flat on its face. The last movie was bullshit, the director knew nothing, but this movie seems very promising.

The DevDs hope to find the glimpse of their wretched and battered life in the movie. Movie after movie, weeks after week, they keep going to the same hall, same misplaced corner settle, anticipating unearthing the answer of “why she left?”

Oh Dear! If you take 13 movies to find one plain answer, any girl will leave you. It is your IQ, poor boy! And not only that girl, even, the director of the movie that, you are watching, knows it.

This is what the true problem is; the consumer doesn’t understand the game of which he is a part. If we think a little hard, we will realize that we were always fighting a lost battle. There is no way, one can figure out whether to watch a movie or not sans watching it. You can take reviews, but like often-said, every individual is different and thus one review doesn’t suit all. You may like a movie which your friend loathes.

Nonetheless, in this despondent and hopeless movie world, I see at least few shafts of light and those are the classics.

Every one of us has watched some cinema which we will remember forever, which left a mark on our heart and brain, and which transformed us. Have you ever wondered, what made that movie extraordinary? Why its impact was so emphatic that, a part of your persona still reflects it?

I presume that it’s the connection of the movie and the viewer.How well it connects and what effect does that connection bring.

If a feature film is able to grip the attention of the viewer for its entire length, then it is a good entertainer but, only if, it can impel you to consider about something that you have never deliberated, or if it can make you feel some emotion in a brighter and stronger manner, or if it can tinker your accepted wisdom and can take it to some unseen planet of thoughts, then the movie  actually stands apart and becomes a classic.

If you have seen the recent masterpieces by Indian film industry like  Taare Zameen Par and Rang De Basanti, you perhaps will better appreciate, what I am trying to put into words.

Goofy (Guest Author)

Feel it!!

Feel it!!

The past few days have witnessed many friends of mine, entering into the blogosphere. Something, that, I always wanted them to do. In my reckoning, blogging is a radical concept and is immensely powerful. It’s more or less impossible in today’s shady world to get such a leveled field to test your skills.

However, that’s a different story and I’ll love to talk about it sometime later. For now, I have got some new blogs to catch up.

To my astonishment, some of them have already started making waves by instigating some engrossing and grueling debates. One such debate is about the views expressed by Amartya Sen in an interview toOutlook

He says

“How peculiar it is that someone as non-violent as Gandhiji, who was very inspired by the Gita, was on the side of Krishna, who is making Arjuna fight a war and kill people, when Arjuna is saying maybe I shouldn’t kill!”

The debate is on at nakul’s blog. But, what dazzles me is the greatness of the epic. In my view it’s too fascinating to be a real story.This epic is either a truly outstanding, flawlessly thought and immaculately inked piece of fiction or it’s arguably the best piece of historical text ever known to humans.An epic authored before Christ, some two thousand years back.

In any of the case it’s highly improbable that the Mahabharata we read today is the original version of the Mahabharata written or conceived two thousand years back (Two thousand years are sufficient to alter any text.).

Even if it is, then also, there is a fair amount of possibility that it’s suffering from some kind of narrative error or at some hapless point the author could have failed to unerringly ink, what he conceived.

The point that I want to make is, while reading such revolutionary and enormously impactful but primeval epics one must not go fact by fact, rather, one  should try to comprehend the soul of the text. His endeavor must be to read between the lines.

This text is like a profoundly researched case study on life.There is no doubt about the fact that the text aimed to teach humanity, benevolence and compassion in large and the impact of this text has been felt everywhere across the globe.

Perhaps human history has never ever witnessed a literary piece that has affected so many lives and I am certain that in all probability it will shape many more lives in the years to come.

It’s an incredibly astonishing story which has taught the human kind the most fundamental lessons of humanity in the most enthralling fashion. Even after this mammoth time since it’s creation, it has not lost its old charm and continues to beckon, regale and educate one and all about the most seminal issues of integrity and righteousness.We owe a lot to this remarkable epic.

P.S. :- Here is how Gurcharan Das unravels some modern-day mysteries through Mahabharata.

Goofy (Guest Author)

An eye for eye!!

Lately, the English contingent turned its back on the World Badminton Championship and returned home citing security reasons. Earlier this year Australia withdrew from Davis Cup for the same reasons.

Now instead of learning from our mistakes and ameliorating the security, some of us are advocating for a global agency examining sport security issues. These people reckon that all of a sudden the Australians and English have turned racist and thus feel that these decisions are racially provoked.

Perhaps, there allegation is just but certainly the solution that they propose is not only run of the mill but outrageously quixotic. Moreover I sincerely fail to see any problem. These people who are propagating this nonsense idea are projecting it as an issue of national pride. The only problem that I see is of cardinal dearth of common sense in some of us.

National pride is a very emotional issue and cannot be debated but we cannot attach every second thing with our national pride. This way we will end up isolating ourselves with the rest of the world and this may culminate in obliteration of the very reason of our pride, our nation.

If we think pragmatically, we lose nothing when some nation backs out from a tournament. Let me elaborate why?

There could be only two reasons behind this, either the players really found the security wanting or they are racist or biased, they loathe our country and want to disdain us.

In the first case, they have all the right to back out and we have all the need to improve and introspect while in the second case, I just don’t understand why we are so hell bent on playing with few individuals who don’t revere us and our nation.

For a moment, let us assume that there is an international body looking after these matters and the body adjudicates against us. What will then happen to our national pride? Who takes the responsibility that the body will be totally efficient and unbiased? I don’t remember many international bodies taking decisions in favor of India or the other poorer nations for that matter for reasons very palpable. And I just cannot imagine the amount of controversy it will cause when the guest nation refuses to comply with it.

This can happen with us too. We all know how paranoid we turn when it comes to wellbeing of our stars. We did refuse going to Pakistan citing security reasons.

These kind of bizarre suggestions only turn matters worse. These agencies, if anything will complicate the matters. We must realize that going fanatical about a decision taken by a body which doesn’t represent even a fraction of the nation’s population will fan the flames of the state of affairs gratuitously. Instead of getting fanatical on this issue and taking irrational decisions we must harness our vigor to fortify ourselves and pick up our game.

Gandhiji once said- “An eye for eye makes the whole world blind.”

Goofy (Guest Author)