Flyyoufools.com

Came across this really funny website while trying to distract
myself from the fact that I have exams in about 3 days.
Humorous, sarcastic and totally random, www.flyyoufools.com provided
me with much comic relief!


Check it out:
http://www.flyyoufools.com/gay-discrimination/

New avatar!

My blog has a new avatar!
Picture courtesy- the very creative Simran Sahi!
Check out her blog:http://aloosepage.blogspot.com/

Kiddie talk

Overheard this in a swimming pool the other day:

Boy #1: Aye moti! You'll fall off the float!
Girl #1: Chup bet, tu kala.
Girl #2: Kala! hahaha! Kala , kala Barrack Obama!
*General laughter*

It made me cringe, smile and raise my eyebrow all at the same time.
Cringed at the implication,
Smiled at the innocence
and raised an eyebrow ( 7 year old kid-Barrack Obama?!?!)

Didn't know I was capable of reacting in multiple ways.
Raised with complexes of 'fair and lovely' ever since our childhood,
do all Indians have an unconscious racist streak in them?

Sound observations

Shooting a documentary really makes you aware of your surroundings.
Is the light okay?How quickly is the sun going to move? Does the colour get balanced out somehow in the frame? Is that too dull a background?Are the sound levels okay? Wait a minute!
What's that humming sound ? Do we have to wait for it to go?

Wherever we went,no matter when and where we were shooting, this
humming noise seemed to follow us.There was nothing we could do about it.All we had to do was just wait it out.Eventually, we figured out what it was- A construction drill.

They say every city has its distinct sound and smell. For Mumbai, that
sound would definitely have to be the construction drill. The sign of the city's desire to grow bigger, better, bolder and possibly more efficient.

At first we thought we had bad luck, but then we realised that this sound was pretty much everywhere.Take a look around you.Construction sites are springing up around every corner and in the suburbs,there's a new mall practically every week, not to mention the mess that the metro digging and construction is causing.

Now one could look at this from different angles.
1.Where is all this money coming from?
2.How are real estate, infrastructure projects sold and bought in Mumbai?
3.Shouldn't there be restrictions on the number of drills going into the earth at the same time?
4. What are the noise pollution levels like in the city?
5.Is Mumbai planning it development?

While all of the above are running through my mind, the question I'm asking, is
How sustainable is this?

Most of Mumbai consists of reclaimed land anyway and every year we get a friendly reminder from mother nature about how 'planned' this ' 'development' is. The monsoons wreck havoc across the city, leaving parts of the city submerged for days.There aren't enough water outlets to allow excess flood water to flow back into the sea and every year they seem to be getting narrower and narrower. All this in the name of infrastructure and making Mumbai into a 'global city'.( whatever that means)

As cliched as it might sound, isn't this going to come back to bite us in the ass?
Why do we as a city not seem to learn or care about past mistakes?
In the 'fast pacedness' of city life, I don't know if we seem to be caring enough about the things that really matter.

What are the things that really matter anyway? Feel free to let me know.

Deepa Dhanraj's Films- Must Watch!

Since time immemorial, there has existed a system of exploitation between classes of society. Feudal lords and slaves, Brahmins and Dalits and the rich over the poor have taken on the roles of exploiter- exploited.
Exploitation is a word that takes a whole different meaning in Film maker Deepa Dhanraj’s dictionary. In her films ‘The Legacy of Malthus’ and ‘Something like a war’ she redefines the word exploitation and enables the viewer to experience it at a micro local level as well as a macro global level.

The Legacy of Malthus is a powerful film about the ‘people bomb’ i.e. population. However, Dhanraj widens the arena to address not only population but also poverty and its link to global control and political organization. Malthus, in his theory stated, “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio, while subsistence increases in an arithmetic ratio.”
Through the juxtaposition of reconstructed scenes of enquiry into the Scottish Highland clearances, interviews with contemporary Rajasthani village women today, archival US news footage and current day propaganda films warning of the dire consequences of global population increase*, Dhanraj argues that poverty might not be so closely linked to population as one might believe. She deconstructs the Malthusian theory of overpopulation as the most significant cause of poverty by asserting that social and political organization rather than population is the principal cause of famine and poverty.
She does so by quoting many people endorsing Population institute of America and other American companies. “Economic policy and social security go hand in hand, additional security is judged by economic security.” Therefore showing the viewer that the U.S has vested interests in the population policies of other nations to keep a check on them, and protect their comfortable position of power. Through the film, the evils of inequitable distribution of wealth are highlighted. This system perpetuates poverty and blames the poor for their own condition. The viewer sees this when one of the rural poor that is interviewed in the film believes the cause of their problems to be their “ignorance, stupidity and poverty.” Ironically, they seem to be the only ones with free and independent minds in the film.

“Something like a war” is a disturbing examination of India's family planning program from the point of view of the women who are its primary targets.*With strong graphic images of various sterilization operations being carried out on unsuspecting victims, the film leaves the viewer with an uneasy feeling.

In the film, a doctor is being interviewed while he is operating on these poor rural women. “This is a quick, efficient and cheap method for sterilization. Unfortunately, one can perform only 100 operations a day.” This ‘quick’ and ‘efficient’ method gives no anaesthesia to its patients and provides no facilities for a recovery period in the hospital. Instruments are not hygienically sanitised but are continued to be used ‘case’ after ‘case’
There is a pressure on all those working at these hospitals to bring in ‘cases’, or women to be sterilised. Women are viewed by this health policy that is supposed to be beneficial to them as targets to be achieved and not as human beings. These policies and medical methodologies deny them of their basic human rights. Dhanraj exposes the helplessness of the entire system by juxtaposing a group discussion with rural women, interviews of the medical workers and by using quotes by Indira Gandhi and other government officials. “There has been pressure to show results, whether we like it or not, there will be some amount of people dead.”-D.N. Pai, Director, Family Planning.

The viewer is able to see exploitation at all levels, the women being operated on, the doctors to achieve targets, government officials and finally, developing countries, in the larger global context. The only free minded people in the film seem to be the group of rustic Rajasthani women, who share a beautiful relationship with Dhanraj. They freely voice their opinions “The man of the house is an empty title” and even their sexual desires. This makes the viewer wonder whether the opinions of these women were even taken into account during the formulation of the policies that would supposedly ‘benefit’ them.

As Jimoh Omo-Fadaka, a Nigerian ecologist points out, “The problem with modern industrialization is that other ‘developing countries’ must ‘catch up’ with the industrialized countries in the conventional way- by building dams, factories , steel mills , etc. Industrialization cannot be lifted from another country and be made to apply in another. It must grow from within the country and proceed according to the cultural attitudes and temperament of the people at their own pace. What is required is that development, economic growth and technology be subordinated to social and human needs and not vice versa, as is the case in many countries today.”

The U.S. exploits developing countries by providing them with cheap, illegal and unsafe medical technology to further their economic interests, we see this when Norplant is used on an experimental basis to as many as 300 women, killing and injuring them for life As Mohan Rao put it, What is attempted is to create a rational, utility maximizing consumer in the contraceptive market place, produced by the reproductive technology industry in the west. In the world of today, we see a substantial shift in global power, as what is echoing across the world is not ‘liberty, equality and fraternity’ but privatization, liberalization and globalization.”

* Source: www.wmm.com

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

-W.B. Yeats

One of my favourites.
The poem was written in reaction to World War One,but it's still holds true
in the time of pink chaddis,global warming, terrorism, radical religious groups,satyam scams and of course, the recession.