The Contrast

                  
                   I like Facebook ,It tells me how elitism is sexually transmitted (parents to children , husband to wife vice-verse and across) , the peculiar thing with the rich is they always live behind walls of silence , which they call it as minding their own business, they live aloof in their shells , false worlds inspired by American TV series and lingos  .
                   They holiday in Europe , taste wines ,are generally open on sexual relationships albeit with a high socio-economic bar, they eat little but exorbitantly costly food ,their ambitions are in stratosphere and morality right in the earth's core , burnt and melted ages ago .
                   With their English and babuji ka contacts they do find hip jobs or niche business opportunity ,which they call merit or hard-work.
                  
meanwhile my people are being butchered as civilians , police and naxals .

Few months back ,
         A naxal couple (f-19yrs, m-21 yrs ) was gunned down not far from my village ,they were fleeing the police ,At a time when men in 40s are playing college boys in movies and behaving stupidly  ,these kids are dying for a revolution they don't understand but who does.
Few weeks back ,
         A police informer was killed near my uncle's home , killed is an under-statement when you strangulate a person with fine wires which cuts deep down the veins it isn't far from beheading and then to instill fear they fully impute the body , legs  and arm . Imagine , the trauma of the family , imagine how kids in  surrounding villages will soak it in .Imagine ....
And few days back,
         A young  ASI (assistant Sub Inspector) was picked from bus and killed in cold blood . The guy would have seen death the moment the bus was stopped .Imagine how will you feel if some-one picks you up on the road like that .Imagine..

          Custodial tortures , child soldiers ,farzi detentions , rapes by naxals and security men are just a back-drop of this very vulgar malaise .Resource curse it is .
                 But i hope the sprouting young men and women of Dantewada have an alternative better that what is present as pain of their people won't ever be understood by the delhi-wallahs . They may at best intellectualize it but will also de-humanize it . A proposition entirely unacceptable .

Smoking@Kgp

 Warning :- Smoking is khatra dangerous for your lungs . Quit it Dost , I have :)

Kgp , infact bengal has a special place for sutta , It may be the sole campus where not only students but staff , faculty ,locals all share a comfortable relationship with it .I have even observed women being comfortable around smoking men . I first thought it had to do something with the culture , really , but then bengal is  a strangely interesting place ,
However given the  fact Bengal is home to the tobacco giant - ITC , it may be something more .

"

The Start
First years are generally wary of it , but then they are first years ,generally a guy in friend circle gets hooked and then slowly do all ,this transition generally spans from 2nd to fourth year, there are obvious exceptions to it .

The First Time 
Coarse , your body out-rightly rejects it , and you wonder why and how do people do it . Initially ,  Logic will guide you to quit , but then the spell of nicotine takes the driver's seat . Once it becomes a habit , people don't challenge it enough .


The Frequency
There is nothing like it , people generally tend to believe they are in control of smoking but most aren't . Generally , availability and economics determine the number of smokes you have .

The Brand & Style
The new guys , do try a lot of fancy (Rs 10 sort of - Black , cigars, B&H , Insignia etc ) and kgp has an insane variety to offer. Regulars generally smoke Classic or Gold Flake.
Frankly , most of the guys don't know how to smoke , they are generally false smokers .But guys with a fitter set of lungs are the best smokers . Ironic indeed

The Kgp Connection
Kgp is like a smoker's capital , you even get cigarettes inside academic complexes . One feels at home when smoking here .You can get cigs here 24X7 , an absolute fact .
    Back at home (Raipur) when i used to sneak out for smoke , the buying experience always felt odd , and smoking out in public open used to feel like a professional bad guy .
    Bengalis do smoke a lot and so the lung cancer connection is quite prominent (WB reports maximum number of lung cancer cases in India )

The Truth
Most of the smokers know it's bad but they  don't exactly how bad it is , how smoke exactly interacts with your lung , how bad are the bad efects and it's dopmine connection  .
As a friend puts it , "Ek sutta 5 min kam karta hain , aur woh bhi end sae" . I really liked the line that time but now i feel more from the -'Aap Chutiyein hain types" .
But General Maneckshaw believes a man should have manly qualities and smoking , drinking and having sex comes in that . As you say , a man can rationalize anything :)

The good thing is most of them try to quit it .However , among educated men a smoking guy has a neutral image , successful anti-smoking campaign should revolve around making it dumb and uncool ,so that the teens don't get hooked to it

Shutta Shops in Kgp
( Do tell if i have missed any )
View Sutta @kgp in a larger map

What if i shoot you ??

What if  i shoot you right through the head, and the time goes slow , slow enough to let you realize the pain and analyze your dogmas , choices , mistakes and ultimately yourself not in abstract but in totality in a flash .without any prejudices .
              May be then , death/rape/farmer suicides won't be a stastic for you , May be then you will learn not to defend the indefensible , May be then you will value the invaluable - every single Life on earth .
              The point being , we rarely empathize the exceptional pain which others go through .Untill majority of the population in this immensely connected numb world won't , History will repackage itself as tragedy time and again
          

History's Anonymous

To be born Today and be unaware of yesterday is a sin on humanity . A crime , utter disregard to the dreams of young men and women of past ,to a generation lost anonymously in the history . .
              Our education has a negligible role in making a thinker out of us , we don't trust our young minds and create superficial concepts in society . For instance - non-violence , i don't understand how can a person really appreciate non-violence without understanding violence and its disastrous nature
We are in constant habit of giving god-men status to our history's great and packaging them as something not practical or implementable .

The Dying Statement

    My relative was posted in the burn unit of the capital’s hospital for a month or so. Luckily I had a chance to roam around with him for few hours for few days. During a conversation, he shared an observation, that ,in most of the burn cases related to domestic violence , the dying declaration of the victim changes .

Initially, the statement squarely blames the offenders, the man’s family but later the statement labels the incident as an accident.The reason being, the victim is emotionally blackmailed on multiple fronts.

• One being, to depart on a good note, the victim is stressed by an array of relatives to believe the event was, a mistake, a momentary lapse.
• Victim is told about the consequences of a police case - elders would be in jail , in that case , who will take care of her kids .If she complains it would have a corresponding effect on her kids . Both implicit and explicit .        

                The doctor in conversation believed, motherly love is the prime reason for the change in dying declaration. Here is the case of co-existence of best and worst of human behaviors .On one side, A mother’s decision to let go of her killers for her kids and on the other a “family’s” attempt to kill a woman in a uniquely grotesque fashion.

                Before we go gaga about women, it shouldn’t be ignored, the mother-in-law, a women herself would have been a partner in crime in all entirety. Also we shouldn’t forgot the gross mis-use of anti-dowry laws by the urban educated women .(Recently a SC panel has recommended to tone down the the law owing to its misuse )
                May be this needs to be looked from the paradigm of how and who we abuse. Who is a fair game and what makes the victim so. The Doc also told me, the tribals never come with such cases ( CG being a tribal state , the hospital concerned is in Raipur ) .It’s predominantly a caste specific phenomenon .Also, given the class divide, it being a govt. hospital, only people belonging to lower economic class were coming .,there are a large number of such cases in upper economic social circle and only a miniscule ever get registered.
               Add to it the nature of death, don’t under-estimate burns , they are one of the most painful ways to die You die slow , with a lot of pain in case you escape the spot-on death . If some-one gives you an option , keep this at-last . This was suggested by the doc ,as  a joke , a deathly sense of humor indeed .
           
Dowry death is a tragedy , our apathy makes it a statistic