Thank you Lennon

Remembering 20th century's greatest peacemaker

Today (December 8) is the 30th death anniversary of John Lennon. It was on this day that Lennon fell to the bullets fired by a lunatic. I think it fit to reflect on a wonderful biography of Lennon which I read recently. The book must be the most authentic one, for Ray Coleman Coleman, a music journalist, was a close friend of Lennon and experienced first hand the musician so intimately right up to his tragic death.

Coleman’s sensitive approach to minute details of Lennon’s various facets is praiseworthy. Teddy bear, rebel student, pop star, propagandist for peace, song writer, oddball, loving husband, doting father…Without eulogizing or denigrating Lennon, the biographer provides an honest and unvarnished portrayal, dissecting Lennon in myriad ways. It’s a definitive biography of a musician and a great philosopher who influenced the 20th century anti-war resistance movement and the ideals of a generation.

One gets a detailed description of things like his bitter rivalry with co-singer Paul McCartney (amplified in How do you sleep in which he takes a dig at Paul), his troubled formative years, post-Beatles days, efforts for world peace, his voracious appetite for women, etc. Though an ardent Lennon fan, I felt bad to read that he mercilessly abandoned wife Cynthia to live with Yoko Yono, the Japan woman who went on to change his life in so many ways. Of course, John wasn’t a fickle lover. It was only that he decided to live with the Yoko the moment he saw her, for, he realized that it was the Woman of his Life.

Jesus Vs Beatles

The book throws light on the controversy that Beatles once claimed themselves to be superior to Jesus Christ. The whole controversy is irrelevant as it was the result of the universal phenomenon of quoting out of context.

The controversial quote appeared in an interview Lennon gave to Maureen Cleave for Evening Standard in the spring of 1966. Lennon said: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right, and I will be proved right. We are more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first - rock'n'roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me."

It didn’t cause any stir in England, used to an overdose of Lennonism. All hell broke loose when the article was republished in an US magazine, Datebook, after four months. This time, instead of getting submerged in the context of a general article, it was front-paged: Lennon was claiming that the Beatles was bigger than Jesus!

It caused a storm across America, especially the American South, the Bible belt, with anti-Beatles demonstrations – the deadly Ku Klux Klan marched - and the bonfires of Beatles records. Radio stations banned their records. The church was irked; a minister even threatened to excommunicate any member of his congregation who attended Beatles concert tour which was to begin in two weeks time.

In London, Maureen was trying her best to place Lennon’s remarks in their true perspective. “He was simply observing that so weak was the state of Christianity that Beatles were, to many people, better known. He was deploring, rather than approving, this.”

But nothing damped down the flames. Finally Lennon was forced to apologize. In a press meet in Chicago, Lennon said: “I just said they (Beatles) are having more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus. But I said it in that way which is the wrong way.”

For the British clergymen John was simply telling the truth: witness the number of people who attended the Beatles’ concerts and bought their records, compared with the Church attendance figures.

It reminded me the popular Karl Marx’s religion-opium quote, often used to denounce religion and religiously repeated to argue that he was vehemently anti-religious. What he really meant is the fact that religion gives the masses a means to forget their woes like opium: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature,” Marx had said in the same breathe.

Similarly, anyone who goes through Lennon’s comments can figure out that he was simply trying to drive home the point that the youth of England in the 1960’s were more interested in music and that religion was less appealing to them.

Some claim Lennon was seeking popularity. It is simple nonsense, because Lennon and Beatles were already popular. They didn’t need a cheap trick to draw attention.

Ever since I started listening to Lennon, and got to know more about his political life and deep dedication for world’s peace (Imagine still gives me ………..) Lennon has assumed a cult status in my mind. His marvelous vocals apart, what is so exciting about him is the fact that he was one of the greatest humanists who strived for peace in the 20th century.

I read those last lines of the biography with awe and a heavy heart, with tears welling up my eyes. I was eager to know how Coleman would finish it, which made me edgy: “As a twentieth century philosopher, he set an example of imagination and humanitarianism. Though he would hate to be deified, a light went out on 8 December 1980. but his music and his spirit shine on.”

True. John Lennon’s spirit still lingers on. Through his music and extraordinary life. Lennon, we all miss you!

Protect healthy dissent

The last thing we need is a police state

Indian government’s initial knee-jerk reaction to Arundhati Roy’s bold statement on Kashmir gives the impression that the world’s largest democracy is inching towards a police state. The political decision not to go ahead with colonial `sedition’ charges against Roy seems to stem from realization that it will only bring international limelight on Kashmir, which the authorities don’t want.

Also, slapping such charges on a person of international repute is sure to bring a lot of disrepute to India. Is India stupid enough to arrest her for speaking out her mind? India doesn’t want to be seen as an Iran or Myanmar, known autocratic nations notorious for stifling independent voices.

While Indian media joined the righties, baying for Roy's blood, a newspaper from England needed to tell us it was under the same colonial and outdated law of sedition that the British government put none other than Gandhiji behind the bars for six years. As this Guardian editorial rightly points out, the attempts go against India’s tradition of “open debate and healthy dissent”. This is what makes India different, a beautiful place to live, in spite of all the shortcomings.

Efforts to muffle dissenting voices don’t bode well for the country. It’s easy to brand anyone anti-national when they speak in a different tone, against what the authorities want us to believe and utter. What right do we have then to talk about jailed Lui Xiaobo, the Chinese campaigner for democracy? What is the difference between India and an autocratic Iran, which has been putting those dissenting bloggers behind bars since 2004?

“Rather than chase after a novelist for speaking at a seminar, the Delhi government would be better off investigating the 100-plus people who are believed to have died in violence in Kashmir since June,” says the editorial.

For the rightwing BJP, Roy’s comments were whiff of solace, for it gave them perfect fodder to deflect attention from RSS’ association with terrorism and the indictment of its leader Indresh Kumar. The controversy over Roy came at a time when it is increasingly becoming clear that the patriotic saffron party is the wholesale trader of bomb-making and the killing of innocents.

Predictably, the whole issue sparked a media vaudeville, because it involves the 'anti-national' Arundhati Roy. The OB vans of prominent TV channels were ready at Roy’s residence even before BJP’s women cadres reached there to protest against her Sunday. Roy’s doubt is genuine: “What is the nature of the agreement between these sections of the media and mobs and criminals in search of spectacle?”

Even the government decided not to proceed against Roy on sedition charges. But the right-wing BJP and the media don’t want to spare her. Before chasing Roy, the government should now order an enquiry on the likely collusion between the mob who assembled before Roy's house and these TV channels.

Annai's unkindest cut

The reel-life Enthiran has got emotions. But a real life Rajini seems to be callous to his own fans

“He is like a God to me,” said Rajanikanth about Siva Sena chief Bal Thackarey. The Tamil superstar met Thackerey at his Bombay house while his blockbuster Yenthiran is making global ripples. He seemed to be head over heels over a man, who has gained notoriety for humiliating and kicking out South Indians (Madraassis as derogatorily called, and Tamils included) upon whom his entire fortune of superhuman stardom has been built.

What must have gone into his head while praising a man, whom civilization hasn’t touched a wee bit and whose only contributions to this world are shedding of innocent people's blood and miseries to many more? There’s little chance that his ardent fans will make a fuss if they come to know that their ‘God’ has equated a chauvinistic Thackerey to the real God. For one, public memory, as they say, is pathetically short. And even if they would be able to recollect the sons-of-soil militancy unleashed by Thackerey, such is their unflinching love for him that they would brush it aside.

When the film star equates this Hindutva-spouting demagogue, he has insulted tens of thousands of his own Tamil fans some of whom must have borne the brunt of Shiva Sena’s ugly war against the `outsiders’.

I used to respect Rajini, for his simplicity and down to earth nature, unlike those superheroes who live a life cut off from the real world. Even as the Enthiran was getting readied for release, Rajini appeared for his daughter’s wedding in full public glare without concealing the signs of ageing in stark contrast to the young and sturdy Enthiran. But now it appears to me that he's no different from Amitabh Bachchan; both sport a façade that smacks of hypocrisy.

Lessons from Chile

Thumbs up to the spirit that saved Chile miners

It is indeed a triumph of humanity. The rescue of Chilean miners also show that nothing is insurmountable if we work together, bound by a single thread of humanity and love, untainted by all those dirty xenophobic, boundaries-bound parochialism. Nothing stopped Chile to seek to the help of NASA and the President reached out to the world in its hour of crisis.

This triumph of humanity shows the simple truth that human beings needn’t necessarily die on this tiny earth for want of material or technology. The world has got everything. What is needed is a benign mind and a heart of gold. Making the world a better place to live for everyone isn't a big thing.

There are too many lessons for India to learn from the whole episode. How the Chile’s government and its entire people stood in unison sans any blame game; the determination, unflinching grit and unity. There was no blame game or shifting of responsibility.

When it comes to the behavior of the media at the disaster site in Chile, the Indian media has something to learn from it. No scribe was seen thrusting his microphone and asked the idiotic now-how-do-you-feel question to the miners who emerged from the mine through the specially made capsule. I dread to imagine the Indian media’s reaction if it happened here. Our English television actors would go berserk, acting it out day and night. The reportages would be plain operas, dipped in self-indulgence and shameless treacle. Because it has got all the ingredients of a Bollywood masala; suspense, fantasy, romance and adventure.

And the crisis management would have been given to some Kalmadi and news stories will follow on how the whole thing was messed up. And a hundred enquiries will follow to find out how money meant for the crisis management was swindled away.

Move on, India

An aspiring super power’s medieval instincts

When Europe and other western countries are mulling over issues like legalizing gay marriages and space tourism, a section in this part of the world is fighting over a ruined medieval mosque belongs to a mythical figure.

Whatever be the court verdict, which will decide the fate of the 60-year-old dispute, the rightwing Hindutva forces, the sole beneficiary of the whole fiasco, has reconciled to the fact that Ayodhya-Babi issues is a dead horse, though some of its leaders might be indulging in self-delusional hallucinations about bringing it back into life. And on the other side, a bunch of funny mullas will equally be a distraught lot, because they have been out there to rebuild this medieval mosque as if its reconstruction will be the elixir for all the ills.

L K Advani, the yesteryear hero whose braying call for the destruction of the mosque has helped BJP seize power, has been sidelined this time around. For the critically ill Sangh family, who is trying to reinvent itself from its moribund present, the issue doesn’t provide a respite, let alone a placebo.

On its part, the UPA government is ultra-sensitive. Or at least that seems to be the impression it wants to send across. The frequency with which the government issued ads in the week past in newspapers and channels requesting people to keep calm in view of the court verdict looks gross. Well, it is essential for a responsible government to ask its people to keep cool in such a sensitive issue.

But the present-day Congress-led government’s alacrity seems to stem from an urgency to atone for the sins of a previous Congress government led by Narasimha Rao who allowed the mosque to be pulled down by a marauding crowd 20 years ago. But will these attempts lay the ghosts unleashed by the Rao regime to rest? Had the Rao government kept the one hundredth of the vigil and circumspection being exhibited by the present government, which is almost apocalyptic over the court verdict, the mosque wouldn’t have been destroyed.

I don’t shed a tear for the destruction of an old building, which hadn’t been used for half century as a place of worship. The loss, I feel, is in terms of its pure archeological value and hundreds of innocent lives. And of course, it paved the way for the fascists to usurp to power.

It’s time to move on. Well, this is a wishful thinking. Let a university or a cultural place be built at the disputed site where everyone can come. I wish the government has the spine for that. All these lofty talks about an aspiring superpower should be matched by real actions and thoughts. For that the country need to shed its past and adopt peace, modernity and prosperity, plus a judicious mix of amnesia.

HEY PURDAPHILES!

Who wants Raihana in Purdah? Arrest this extremism

Raihana R Khazi has taken on the extremist elements in Kerala society. This 23 year-old-woman from Kasargod has been getting threats from some Islamic extremists for not wearing Purdah. Raihana is an aeronautical engineering graduate and chooses to wear what she likes: jeans. But it irked some jobless fanatics. who want her in Purdah. When death threats started pouring in, she sought Kerala High Court’s help, which directed the state to give protection to her life.

The other day, she held a press conference in Calicut to say that none can dictate what she should wear, which is a personal choice. To become a Muslim, one doesn’t follow a particular dress code, Raihana feels. There are reports the opposition to her dress code came from within her family itself and that there is no need to make a fuss about. But being such a hotly debated subject, the issue needs some discussion.

Islam only asks its followers to dress modestly and doesn’t impose any dress code. There's no homogeneous dress code either for men nor for women, transcending boundaries. Purdah is not an Islamic dress. Common sense tells us that it is rather a dress meant for desert conditions. Its purpose is to guard one from the windy sandstorms and adverse climate conditions of deserts. Look at the traditional dress Arab men wear even today: the long rob is almost like a Purdah, except for the veil,

There are women who vouch for Purdah, saying it gives them a sense of protection. Fair enough. But that's doesn't mean obscurantists can go around imposing their sense of dress code. There are many other pressing, real instances of injustices and issues for these souls to feel moral outrage about.

Now I remember seeing an old black and white family photo of a friend’s grandpa in Calicut. There was nothing to suggest the `Muslimness’ in the attire of those women in the photo, except that his grandma’s head was covered with the tail end of the sari. That’s all. Purdah became prevalent in Kerala post-Babari demolition. A sense of Muslim insecurity coupled with the inculcation of fear by the Mullahs ensured that this desert dress has almost come to symbolize Muslim women. Was this black rob, covering head to toe, a sane way of establishing their identity?

Today, Purdah has become such a fashionable attire and it is big business. It's a classic case of mindless imitation in the name of religion. Lucky that camel is not a common animal in India!

Underdogs of two superpowers

New-age slavery that goes unnoticed in India and China

Two interesting articles about two emerging ‘super-powers’ are worth mentioning. One is an investigative report by Observer on how poor workers are exploited in Indian sweat shops meant for some of the well-known British companies. The other is a hard-hitting and wonderful article by award-winning British journalist Johan Hari on China’s factories where human beings work like machines for trans-national corporations.

Both the articles talk about new-age slavery camouflaged as development and prosperity, how workers are exploited, overworked and underpaid in sweat shops in India and China.

Poor workers, who migrate from states like Bihar with families, are employed at the Indian factories for some of the leading British brands like Marks & Spencer, Gap and Next. They are paid half the legal overtime in gross violation of labour laws. When they protest they are threatened or asked to leave, a practice defined under international law as forced labour and outlawed around the world. Here, the perennial Indian menace of middle men are playing the dirty game, with the workers being paid 25 paisa an hour.

The situation in China is really awful. Workers at the sweat shops for companies that make computers and swanky electronic gadgets meant for making life enjoyable for the `first world’ too are paid paltry wages (an instance is 20p an hour).

Hari tells the story of 27-year old Yan Li, a worker at a gigantic factory, which manufactures i-Pads and Playstations. His family said his shifts used to last for 24 hours and sometimes stretched to 35! One night, after a marathon shift, Li dropped dead. According to his family, he never had any health problems; they showed up only after he started working. The same night, another worker committed suicide, the tenth this year.

Death from overwork has become so common in China there is a word for it: guolaosi. Estimates show that 600,000 workers die every year in China, overworking for making goods for the 'other' world.

And the workers are employed in deplorable conditions; there are 10 workers in each room, and each dorm houses 5,000, with no showers; they are given a sponge to clean themselves with. A typical shift begins at 7.45am and ends at 10.55pm.

The conditions are so harsh it can very well be compared to Hitler's camps. Hari writes: “Workers must report to their stations 15 minutes ahead of schedule for a military-style drill: "Everybody, attention! Face left! Face right!" Once they begin, they are strictly forbidden from talking, listening to music, or going to the lavatory. Anybody who breaks this rule is screamed at and made to clean the lavatories as punishment. Then it's back to the dorm.”

You are not even allowed to answer the call of nature? This reminds me of the chilling account in the brilliant book, No Logo, by Naomi Klein. She describes how women workers in Mexican export plants are required to prove that they are menstruating through such humiliating practices as monthly sanitary pad-checks (page 222). Employees are kept on 28-day contracts, the length of the average menstrual cycle - making it easy, as soon as the pregnancy comes to light, for the worker to be dismissed. Women's reproductive rights are curbed lest it'd affect the productivity.

In one of the special economic zones in the Philippines, seamstresses sewing garments for Gap, Guess and Old Navy say they sometimes have to urinate in plastic bags under their machines. There are even rules against talking and even smiling. (page 211)

In his report, Hari also describes the poignant story of 17-year-old Liu Pan operating a machine that made cardboard for big-name Western corporations. When he tried to clear its jammed machinery, he got pulled into it. His sister said: "When we got his body, his whole head was crushed. We couldn't even see his eyes."

The Chinese dictatorship allows only rich people to form organizations. If you are worker and try to form a union, you run the risk of being jailed for 12 years. But things are changing with labourers across China forming unions. Across 126,000 Chinese factories, workers have formed unions, demanding higher wages, a humane work environment, and the right to organise freely. Are Indian comrades listening?

Photo: Factory workers in China assembling fiber optic systems.

Steve Jurvetson/Wikimedia Commons

Bravo Assange

Wikileaks heralds a new era in journalism

It is being hailed as ‘data journalism’, may be because of the enormous volume of secret files unearthed by Wikileaks, the whistle-blower website started by a maverick messiah of the wronged from Australia named Julian Assange (in picture). Little lights of hope when we thought we are heading for a cul-de-sac.

The 92,000 military documents detail the criminal misadventures of an occupation army led by the US, shamelessly called coalition forces. A coalition of murderers fit to be tried in an international court of law.

“Journalism should be more like science,” Assange told The Guardian. “As far as possible, facts should be verifiable.” This ex-hacker says what he is practicing is “scientific journalism,” comparing it to biology researchers publishing their data sets along with their papers.

What was striking about the whole thing is that Wikileaks’ exciting co-operation with three media houses, viz. London-based Guardian, New York Times and the German weekly Der Spiegel. While Wikileaks unearthed large volumes of raw data, the job of sifting through the entire documents and bringing out the relevant and explosive materials was left to these newspapers and the magazine. They set a common deadline for publishing the stories.

The symbiosis between Wikileaks and these mainstream media houses is praiseworthy and heralds a new era in investigative journalism. A true novel experiment in journalism that needs nourishment and support, for, what this collaboration aims to target is corrupt regimes, war-mongering maniacs and the like.

Is this thinkable in India?

“I would love to start an operation from India as well!” Assange told Nupur Basu from UC Berkeley when she met him during a seminar on investigative journalism. He seemed to be excited when Basu told him about sting operations in India.

But will a similar kind of operation possible in India? Imagine Wikileaks unearths such an explosive materials and try to a similar kind of operation: distributing them among the top media houses in India. `A' will be wary of whether `B' will come out with the exclusive story first. So in its haste to break the story before the competitor does, chances are that A or B or C will go for the jugular by coming out with the story without waiting for the others.

India is a country where even naming a competitor in a newspaper’s pages is considered sacrilegious, let alone co-operating. What could be the reasons? Petty ego, parochialism, fears of giving undue advantage to the competitor, wrong notions of public interest journalism...

In India's crazy dog-eat-dog media world, when we can see our media houses shedding inhibitions and working together for the common good of the society, untethered by those obnoxious notions of competition, petty ego, etc? Hundred year? May be.

Let’s forget about collaboration or co-operation. Remember the criminal silence of the Indian mainstream media when Tehelka was mowed down ruthlessly by the India's right-wing BJP government after it exposed the stinking corruption in the corridors of Indian military.

It was one of the rare and sad instances in the history of media freedom when the Kafkaesque weight of the government was used to unleash a witchhunt on Tehelka; raiding its offices, falsely implicating its journalists and annihilating the brave venture. It’s another matter that Tejpal bounced back like a phoenix in a new format and added power. But the Indian media didn’t extend its support when it was needed most, during the moments of crisis faced by one of its peers.

For our white masters, with love

History will never forgive successive governments for treating its people as flies

Manmohan Singh and his team can rejoice at a Bhopal local court’s verdict on world’s worst industrial massacre. He and his team (and his predecessors, too) can take heart from the fact that nothing has ever been done to antagonize their white masters lest India’s image as an investor-friendly country where trans-national corporations can come and set up factories, pollute or even annihilate an entire people gets blunted.

Warren Anderson, the then chief of Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), who’s enjoying his quite retired life in the US, must be laughing over India’s self-serving politicians and ludicrous and flawed Indian judicial system that let a corporate criminal like him escape.

Who are the culprits here? A CBI which failed to convince the courts, including the Supreme Court, about the gravity of criminal charges against the UCC and its officers? Or a Supreme Court which diluted the charges against the company executives from murder to accident by negligence. Or the Indian system that let a Warren Anderson to escape, despite he being arrested on a non-bailable warrant?

In fact, at various levels, every institution, from courts to police to politicians, has been responsible for their commission and omission, making a mockery of thousands of dead and those who continue to bear the agonies of this massacre.

It’s really appalling to see the media and the collective society go on calling it a tragedy or disaster, when facts are very clear for us to see that the UCC allowed the deadly gas to leak.

Consider these facts:

As early as in 1973, Anderson himself had noted that the technology to be used in Bhopal factory was "unproven". That makes him Accused Number One.

Documents reveal UCC went ahead with the unproven and dangerous technology for storing the methyl-isocyanate (MIC), which is 500 times deadlier than hydrogen cyanide, and can be lethal unless refrigerated to zero degree. Refrigeration was never used in its plant in Bhopal where temperature often went upto 40 degree C. The company saved $37.68 a day by way of this.

Muñoz, the first MD of Union Carbide India Ltd, said he had opposed the company plan to install three giant MIC tanks in Bhopal, for, only token storage was necessary, in small containers, based on economic and safety considerations. But he was overruled.

UCC’s own engineers warned against storing MIC except under dire necessity, that too in the tiniest quantities. In Bhopal it was kept in a huge tank, the size of a steam locomotive.

After a factory worker, Ashraf Khan, died due to a phosgene spill on 24 December 1981, a UCC team from the US found 61 hazards, 30 of them major and 11 in the dangerous phosgene/MIC unit.

But instead of upgrading the safety standards, which were religiously followed in its Virginia plant, the company resorted to lunatic and criminal cost-cutting measures like reducing the staff and training days. To cite just one example, in the MIC control room a single operator had to monitor seventy-odd panels, indicators and controllers, all old and faulty, which often failed. The company thereby saved $40/day.

The operators had to manage the huge, dangerous plant using manuals written in a language they never understood: English.

What else these convey other than the plain truth that the company didn't care a damn to the lives of the shantytown of Bhopal?

It appears everything has been an ‘adjustment’. Two hours after the June 6 judgment was pronounced, the accused got bail! Victims are disappointed that the accused didn’t spend even one night in jail.

Now, dirty skeletons have started tumbling out showing how shamelessly the then ruling Congress party, both in New Delhi and in Madhya Pradesh, helped Warren Anderson escape prosecution in India soon after his company killed thousands. Kafkaesque Congress party and India's self-serving bureaucracy ensured that their sugar daddy is not prosecuted in India for his crime of mass murder.

The then investigating officer of CBI (India's answer to America's FBI) is telling how he was instructed by the external affairs ministry not to proceed against Anderson. A state aircraft was arranged at the behest of the then state chief minister Arjun Singh for the safe escape of Anderson. Reports also say the then district collector and superintend of police ensured the safety of their master (again in a state car with all the state security fit for a VIP) to the airport and even gave a salute to their white master before he got into the airplane! In New Delhi he met with the then President Gyani Z Singh before flying to his home country.

Declassified CIA records show Anderson was released on the orders of Rajiv Gandhi, fearing the whole incident would mar the party's prospects in the forthcoming elections and the apprehension that it would scare away .foreign investors.

Like in many other man-made killings such as the anti-Sikh riots of 1984 or the anti-Muslim pogrom in 2002, justice will remain elusive to 22,000 people killed (as per a 2004 Amnesty International report) from the poisoning, and those hundreds who are still born with grotesque birth defects such as missing palates and fingers growing out of shoulders. For, the Indian ruling class is suffering from an acute and incurable disease inherited from India’s colonial legacy. It’s called slavery. Slavery to the white masters.

Photo: This mother ran with her kid from the deadly gas, but died on the road

Instant orgasm and pangs of a sick society

Some stray thoughts after a visit to Goa

A 20-days stay in Goa gave me enough ammunition to tear apart the immaculate veneer of The Great Kerala Myth, assiduously fed into the general psyche of this tiny state, as a progressive place with European standards. My journalist friend Shanuj who's leading a quiet life of solitude and anonymity in Taliegao is at his eloquent best when he tells why he decided to settle down in Goa. Though visits by gatecrashers like me disturb the comfort cocoon of his cozy life, he tells me he loves such breaks.

Geographically Goa is an almost ditto of Kerala with paddy fields, jackfruit trees and mango trees dotting the tiny state. Small, beautiful tile-roofed houses still dot the interiors of Goa, in perfect harmony with the tropical weather conditions. This is in sharp contrast to Kerala, endowed with the same geography and weather, where unfortunately it is a shame to own a tiled-roof house today. The money flow from the middle east countries, while contributing in great measure in Kerala's development, has proved to be a bane in Kerala, making it a place of concrete junkyard. Nowhere else in the world perhaps one finds houses built in utter disregard for the climate and geographic conditions.

Laid-back, easy and almost non-interfering, traits attributable in some extent to years of Portuguese rule, give Goa an aura of distinctiveness. The best part in Goa is that everyone is at peace and ease with himself or herself. I still recall vividly how a ring in my mobile phone helped start a conversation with an old lady who was sitting next to me in a bus from Taleigao to Panaji city. Listening to the western classical number ringtone, she asked me instantly: "Oh you love music.!?" When I said yes, she told me about a musical programme to be held at a Church that evening. She made it a point that I shouldn't miss because the show was free. She was so friendly. I thought it for a while later; in Kerala, women folks hardly sit next to you in bus, let alone strikes a conversation!

Small van-like buses move as if they are part of a caravan accompanying a VIP's dead body! Sometimes, you'll find them frustratingly slow; always ready to apply brakes the moment they spot men and women standing sideways. A far cry from the maddening murderous machines in Kerala where, almost every other day human beings are mowed down under their heavy wheels. In fact, there's an air of compassion about the way the bus staff treat the prisoners of education unlike in Kerala where they are pushed back and forth by unruly private bus conductors.

There aren't separate seats for women unlike in Kerala whose society thinks its pseudo morality will shred into pieces if two sexes sit together. It's an apartheid no one talks about. So in Kerala you’ll find the weird situation where even when seats are vacant meant for the ‘other’ the opposite sex wouldn’t have the temerity to sit. Here's one lab experiment for Kerala: Take the pervert in your neighborhood and get him sit along with a woman passenger for a few days, and will he still suffer from an orgasm?

This separation creates an `other’ feeling in both the sexes. So men tend to look at every female as a sexual object, a Temptress Eve, a potent seduction machine in cahoots with Satan. This separation permeates to almost all spheres of Kerala society and explains the lack of healthy man-woman relationships in a state where infants to 70-year olds are raped.

This gender-egalitarian seat arrangement of Goa reminded me of a tragic incident that happened a few years back in Kozhikode. There was this working couple of whom the husband was blind. Every day, the wife would take the blind husband to the office. She’d take him to the bus stand, help him get into the bus so that he reached the office safely.

One morning, after helping him get into the bus through a private bus’s back door, she hurriedly rushed to the front door meant for women passengers. No longer could she touch her feet into the bus footboard, the door checker gave the signal to the driver to proceed and she was crushed under the wheels. After reading about this tragic incident in the newspaper, I was numb for a moment, trying to imagine the state of that desolate, heart-broken man. His wife was his eyes. Literally. And he lost them all because some weird and illogical system in place.

The tragedy wouldn’t have occurred if she had got into the bus through the `men-only’ back door along with her hubby. But sadly, the Kerala society has so bloody made up its mind that a woman IS NOT SUPPOSED to get into a private bus through the back door. It's a cardinal sin. A sacrilegious act.

Now, will someone please stand up and say: It is the constipated, sick and hypocritical Kerala society which is responsible for the death of this lady, orphaning a hapless man. How many tragic deaths like this have to happen for these simple thoughts of common sense to sink into Kerala's consciousness?

Photo: Wikimedia Commons