Homecoming of the prodigal son

Yeah. I m back at it. I could not resist but to look upon blogging as catharsis. Now, I couldn't stop myself anymore from letting out my thoughts. And why not, after all so many things have changed in the past few weeks. Nothing is the same anymore. IPL has changed the public, media and business perception of cricket, Chelsea finally managed to get past their nemesis, the Supreme Court of India(the honorable is intentionally removed..in a worse mood would've replaced it with an expletive ), the ISRO had managed to place 10 satellites at a time into their respective orbits and above all I have topped in a course out here in IITK for the first time( and how!!). The world is all of a sudden a better place to live in ( or is this because of a change in perception?).

P.S:As always, not everything I pen down here makes sense.

An excerpt

(source : http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/saurabhsaksena/559/42312/the-curse

-of-being-a-hindu-in-modern-india.html)

Every individual has the right to self respect and dignity, especially from its fellow countrymen. Irrespective of the religion, caste, creed and all other secular lingo, we all should be treated fairly. However, somewhere down the line I feel in the present modern setup of India, self respect of the Hindus has been taken for a ride by media and politicians alike. We have been considered harmless and so nobody cares if there is any sort of infliction on us. For them, it is more important to concentrate on issues which aim at pleasing the minorities. And make no mistake, minorities not only include Muslims, but also Christians and other non-Hindu religions. I have nothing against my fellow "minority" countrymen, for in all fairness I have never even thought of them as "minorities". For me they are as Indian as I am. They definitely need a change in their socio-economic conditions and we all should support the cause. Infact, we have mutual respect for each other and if not for petty politics, there wouldn't be an iota of doubt on our camaraderie.

The recent coverage of "Gujarat revisited" did make me think that Hindus have been sidelined into oblivion. Agreed, there were lots of Muslim casualties and it is a despicable act of barbarism to kill innocent children, women, and others. Rightly so they have been given coverage to show the ghastardly side of the politicians. However, was there not even a single Hindu who lost his life in the riots? Leave that, even the media coverage of "Gujarat revisited" did not for once make an attempt to sympathize with the karsewaks who lost their lives. That was equally shameful on the part of the murderers and those karsewaks were innocent too. All these days, media termed the Godhra train carnage only as "the aftermath of Godhra" and in a split second the news turned to the innocent Muslims who were killed in the riots. Even a common Muslim felt the pain of the massacre of the karsewaks so why couldn't the media capture the trauma their families went through? Why couldn't the likes of Barkha Dutt who were capturing possibly each and every house of the Muslim victims for the primetime news did not for once go to the karsewak's family? Why were all the cameras turned to the Muslim rehabilitation camps and none to the Hindu camps? I have also felt the pain seeing media bits of the way riots shaped into a deadly massacre. Infact, majority of the common Hindus condemned the shameful act of genocide and attacked the Gujarat government for poor handling of the situation. We all felt the pain of our fellow Muslim brothers and I am definitely sure they had also felt the pain when the karsewaks were burnt alive and helpless.

Then why did the media not capture that part of the riots? And to top it all, how derogatory it felt when the deaths of the innocent Karsewaks in the burning train were termed as sabotage by few men to induce polarization, to gain prominence. How shocking it was to see the politicians leaving no stone unturned to prove that the train carnage was accidental and not preplanned just for the sake of their insatiated urge for more votes. In just one action, they jolted the self respect of the Hindus. And it is not only Gujarat, the Kashmiri Hindus have also not got significant media coverage for reasons well known to the media. They and politicians awake on this issue only when assembly elections in Kashmir are about to happen. And in all honestly, why will they cover such stories? They shall not gain anything by inciting the Hindus for it has been historically proven that we don't really feel loss of self respect for anything and everything. We believe in the "sab chalta hain" ("everything goes") attitude. Why will the politicians talk about issues pertaining to Hindus? We do not form the chunk of their vote banks. And even if we do, we celebrate the voting day as a national holiday staying at homes.

We are not asking for favors. We also do not mind our dear PM to suddenly wake up and announce reservations for "dalit Muslims" as if dalit Muslims are not a subset of the larger dalit community. We have been seeing this for quite a long time and now we have become thick skinned. What we request is to feel for our sufferings in the same vein as others. We also have a sense of self respect and dignity and expect fair treatment meted out to us. It is high time that media acts responsibly and in an unbiased way. We have already lost hope in our politicians. Hence, media becomes all the more potent. I am not undermining the goods media has delivered. However, there is always some scope for improvement and this is definitely one grey area where the media needs to pull up its socks.

Hopefully, there will be an all out attempt on the part of the media to rehabilitate our Kashmiri Hindus just as they are doing for the Gujarati Muslims. At the end of the day, it is an Indian that will benefit and not a Hindu or a Muslim.

Vande Mataram

I should start with none other than Pirates of the carribean-At world's End.A splendid movie it was with a truly complicated plot.It was not a movie that was made to just cash in on the goodwill of its prequels,because if that were the case the entry of Jack Sparrow(ooh I'm sorry..Captain..Captain Jack Sparrow)would not have been so delayed.Some dunderheads (I take the privilege of calling 'em so) found the movie boring because these self-proclaimed rational thinkers miss a point that one is ought to watch movies from an artistic perception rather than scientific.(I beg to differ in case of Sci-Fi which by the way is the most hated genre by me).The "calypso"part was refreshingly new added another dimension to the plot and of course made a lot of sense.I being an ardent Depp Fan would rate this movie somewhere around a good film and a must watch.

another dimension!!

Yes,for the past few days I've been so bored by the lack of activity(or presence of 2oo many activities??)that I've decided I'm gonna add another dimension to an already clumsy personality of mine,viz.reviews of films I've seen.well,this might seem to be the most stupid or most creative idea but as "Ed Wood" says often there is a fine line separating the most idiotic and the most brilliant thoughts.

A month after a thorough rest

The title says everything about what is gonna follow in this post.A month hence the examinations life's so cool that very thought of having to spend two more years studying frightens me.aahh..these days...what a nice time I am having..I envy the life which I am leading right now..absolutely no tensions..no one to nudge you.No sights of grading in the vicinity,staying a month away from the "continuous grading"mania of IITK has its usea I presume and of course we are making use of them to the fullest.People are supposed to pursue study under the guidance of faculty members which I suppose very few people do sincerely.As for me,speech recognition hasn't really taken off, but yes,the progress of the case study seems to be pretty encouraging.I have been busy most of this month taking my time off literally everything.

Here ends 4th semester..I can hardly believe the fact that I'm into 3rd year so soon..Some one had correctly said that "Time flies".Anyways this was a decent semester at the end of which I had managed to ameliorate my academics.For at least the next three months I can pursue whatever I'm interested in.After a two days off today I've brushed upon the white paper of Sphinx4 system.
We are supposed to build a Speech Recognition based automation system in Hindi for none other than IIT Kanpur which would pave way for the advent of speech systems on Indian Languages which aim at reaching out to the illiterate,the rural people and the physically challenged.Quite a noble cause which enthuses me.I hope to play my part well .

Yet another suicide..

It was the 26th day of april ..I was having my breakfast in the mess worrying about the Computer Organisation examination which I was scheduled to appear later that day.A mess worker who was serving water,told me"ek ladka train ke niche koodke sucide kar liya hai..aaj subah tin baje..aap koi bharadwaj ko jante hain kya..hall-5 mein jo bharadwaj tha wo yahin pe tha na pichele sal tak, ..gora sa..wo to padhai mein tej tha..".How could I possibly explain to the mess worker that all of the fellows at this world reputed institute are supposed to be the creme de la creme of the nation and it is indeed unfortunate that students commit suicides because of their inability to live up to the expectations of the people surrounding them.

I was surprised first to hear that yet another suicide had taken place in the campus ((though it shouldn't have been for since my first semster at this so called dream institution I have seen such an incident every semester during the endsem ).But this was a very disturbing experience.The person this time was a guy whom I knew very well and addressed "anna".I couldn't believe this and just hoped that it was not him but somebody else.(selfishness.. you know).I immediately rushed to my room to find out the details and confirm the identity . After contacting almost every senior I knew and after an hour or so ,that was confirmed.It was "him".
The reason behind this was stated to be academic deficiency leading to depression.I was very upset about it.
I still remember the lean, fair, childish ,soft spoken senior who did not know how to rag the juniors properly and hence took one of his senior's help and later on wanted me to recite some sacred hymns as a part of the same.
I had met him in our canteen about 3 days before the mishap and talked extensively for about an hour during which we counseled a junior .Never did I know that that was the last time I'd ever see him.

Oh ,my dear friend!! may your soul rest in peace.