The Mall of Mangalore

There were no malls in Mangalore when I first went to Saudi Arabia for employment.  I had seen them in Bangalore and Mumbai and was fascinated by the experience of visiting one. The glass exteriors, the wide hallways, the no. of shops within shops, the inevitable food court, cinema screens and the gaming area – an all in one entertainment experience! 

However what really drew me and many others like me from tier II cities to these malls was the centralized air-conditioning. I could spend hours together wandering the hallways, buying nothing, doing nothing, ogling  at the goods on offer, and the people milling around, trying to figure out their relationships, their attitudes and their financial status , off and on and just keeping my cool!

Then I went to Saudi Arabia, and while the mall experience was the same, the scale was treble. It is then that I really began to understand the Mall culture. Lulu’s especially,  and the Mall of Arabia, on the eastern coast of KSA, were built on huge open spaces, that could house maybe five football fields, and everything that anybody would need to survive, to live and to enjoy was available there, ranging from electronics to cooked food. 

I also began to see a phenomenon I was not used to, but got acclimatized to very soon.  I call it the WAF (Walk and fill) syndrome.  Walk in, push a trolley, much like a pram in front of you, glance to your left, glance to your right and  stop and pick up what you THINK you need, not what the next whole demands,  and fill your trolley. Motor on through the various sections, stopping at the food counter to pick up tandoori, rolls, biryani and whatever fancies your tongue and finally land up at the Check out counter, where you can buy now and pay later and then make a great escape with  laden bags in your left and bags in your right

Often the mall visitor, has a big car, a big family and brings them all along for the ride.Take a trolley, walk around and fill it to the brim,

For better or worse (A valentine's day special)

For better, or worse, Let me say it in verse

I love you,

Oftentimes, I’ve heard her say,

but more often than not,

I feel it, even if she’s away.

And while I’ve been married

for donkey’s years,

The beauty of it is

It always feels

Like yesterday

And especially today,

The eve of St. Valentine’s day.

 It’s that time of the year, when our thoughts turn to our sweet hearts.  Those we have now, or those we have had in the past.   Luckily for me, it’s the same one, so there is no confusion.

But I warn you - Let your thoughts not turn to her too – Please concentrate on what I am saying!  Many years ago, shorter than those on donkey, whatever you may think, I fell in love. Ah, now I can see the interest in what I have to say!

How did I fall in love? It was not an accident. In accidents, there is no premonition, no hope and lots of injury.  I had premonition, lots of hope and very little injury, all because we were classmates, and were in close proximity, not too close you understand,  to have all of those.

 She was this pretty, supple, simple and soft spoken girl of my dreams.

Sadly she hardly spoke to me, but I could see her often laughing and enjoying a joke with her friends. This made me jealous. It was the first indication that I had fallen in love.  I’d never felt jealous before.

I had visions of her laughing and joking with me too, but didn’t quite know how to get her to go about it. 

As luck would have it, we were children, of our parents no doubt, but also of destiny.

My passion, other than my wife, is my interest in the written word and I was the editor of the college magazine.  One of the pages was dedicated to achievements. It was slated to contain photos, names and awards. My wife was good at sports and she had won something, I don’t quite recall what (this does not reflect on my love for her), something in long distance running during the college sports  - no wonder she has stuck with me for so long, and I needed her photo.

As it was a break between semesters, I had to get it from her. And I was excited at the prospect.  At last I would have something of hers with me to cherish!

 I found out her number from the office, went over to my friends place (we  didn’t have a phone in those days) and called her up. She in the midst of saying the family rosary. Her elder sister picked up the phone and when I asked for her, she asked me, Who’s speaking, and I with a quavering voice, said her classmate. She said nothing further, but called her to the phone.

Obviously everyone had stopped praying and was keenly observing and  listening to her,  - A kind of prayer in itself.

She was known at home as a quiet child – not in our home now, but in her home then!. 

So the ears were all peeled back in anticipation.

Hello I said, Hi she said, I said I need your photo for the magazine. She didn’t waste words or time. She said she had a black and white photograph, which she would come to college the next day and give it in the office. She asked if that was ok.

All I could do was say yes.  I had more important things on my mind.  I took the plunge.

She had been giving me one word answers till then, and so when I asked her if she is interested in me romantically, she quickly said “yes”  I was elated and over the moon.

Much later,  after the donkeys ears, were fully grown, I came to know the mystery behind her quickly sayin “yes”,. She told me  and this is her words: “If I had  said no, you would ask why and I would have give an answer with everybody listening, besides, I think I wanted to say yes, and was waiting for you to ask”

 Fortunately for me and unfortunately for her, she is a principled woman. Once she says  something she stands by it, and she has stood by me all these years, that’s why tomorrow is special. And by the way I have not given back the photograph.

The first idea of romantic love (there are many other types, including Toastmaster love J ) came from the god, Eros, in Greek mythology.

We can only love someone else to the degree to which we love ourselves. This is the prerequisite to receiving life’s greatest treasure: love! If we do not love ourselves, we unconsciously put an unfair burden on our partner to love us twice (once to fulfill our need for self-love, and once to fulfill our need to be loved).

“How do I know whether I am truly in love?” and “What is love?” are questions that are often posed. Theogony describes Eros in the following enthralling terms: "…and Eros, the fairest of the deathless gods; he unstrings the limbs and subdues both mind and sensible thought in the breasts of all gods and all men

I believe that true love is only possible between two people who are right for one another.  And how to recognize this wonderful feeling?

 Well, love is a feeling that you can realize if you compare what you feel when you find yourself in some unusual situations such as these!

Like these.

1.      When you’re on a crowded metro in Mumbai during the rush hour, and your face is submerged in someone else’s armpit and your toes are being crushed by someone else’s feet and all of a sudden, right in front of you, a seat opens up. You sit down and feel contented.

2.      When you drape freshly washed and dried clothes, unironed  on your overworked and exhausted body. It’s a wonderful feeling when something so familiar can make you feel so fresh and so renewed.

3.      Getting packages in the mail from back home during summer camp or boarding school. Nothing matters any more, the cramped camp or school conditions, the discipline, the bug bites etc. It’s just the happiness of opening the package that keeps you going.

4.      The first couple of seconds on a rollercoaster as your cart climbs slowly up the lift hill. Leaning back as your pumping heart is making a scene and you’re building up the strength to scream and you’re wondering if you can’t turn around now, but you really don’t want to. You want to feel the ride!

5.      When you really, really, have to pee but the line at the bar is 17, and cross and uncross your legs waiting impatiently to get there.

6.      Taking a shower after a long hot day, and as the warm water splashes on you. You close your eyes and think you are somewhere else….

But remember, falling in love can be a bit like acid reflux – the stuff that causes heartburn? Your chest will begin to burn and it’ll suddenly become quite difficult to swallow… while it lasts. It’s also similar to that feeling when you wake up at 3am and realize you don’t have to get up for work yet. That you still have time to go back to where you left off and try again,– Wonderful feeling – For better or worse!

Tolerance of Intolerance

(appeared as a middle in the Deccan Herald dated 9/11/2015)

I am a not an award winning author, neither the Pulitzer, nor the Akademi, unlike  many of my friends, but I wish I had an award to return. I would have done it quietly, without a press conference, without much ado, not because I didn’t want it, not because I wanted to protest, but because it was taking up too much place in my house.

I've had to shift house due to inflation catching up with my meager royalties and move into a 2 bedded flat, selling   my three bedded one,  bought partially with the help of that award. The award had come my way for my book "Tolerance of intolerance", written many eons ago it seems, but very relevant today, I found, for my fellow writers, their film making and scientist friends, are returning their awards too, and that too en masse... but for different reasons. They have come to believe. today, while I believed   then. Today, it does not matter a whit, as I struggle to buy dal and meat, any meat,  to fulfill my nutritionist’s  protein rich diet, and pay tax, income service and other indirect taxes, on my meager income.

Sadly the man I once revered for his articulation, and his ability to describe an issue  any which way,  and the one responsible for my current  between Poverty lines plight, called, not me in particular, but people of my ilk, 'rabid anti ruling party elements' and my giving up the award - a 'manufactured rebellion' - akin to the Sepoy mutiny of 2015.

This pained me no end, as I've never voted in my life, for I always wanted to remain sane,(yet I'm now referred to as rabid) and gave up the award only because there was no place else to put it  - the display case was gone as was the mantel in my previous rather spacious flat.

It was the Prime minister who called upon us to ‘Make in India’ and when we did they called it a manufactured rebellion, as though the word ‘manufacture’ was bad… Oh! Maybe it is, in certain cases, because, it slipped my mind, they derive a lot of money from Services.  But there is a new concept that is taking root… spontaneous manufacture!

  But even a ‘rebellion’ if it has to be manufactured, requires raw material of intolerance and suppression, and supply side economics is currently at work. 

That takes me back to my book 'Tolerance of intolerance'. How do you tolerate those who do not tolerate you?  What if that intolerance interferes in your daily life, in your food habits, in your ability to earn a living etc? You protest, and when your protest is rubbished and suppressed, you tolerate the intolerance.  

There's something about Children...

It’s Children’s day, and there's something about children that reminds me that we once belonged to that happy category of human beings.

I was parked at a signal recently. A child in ragged clothes came across and stretched out his hand, asking for alms. I couldn’t deny him that. I took out a coin and placed it his palm, but looked into his eyes. They were bright with expectation, with none of the morbidness of his situation troubling him. The light turned green and I moved on, stopped at a hotel to have a cup of coffee, and there wiping my table before I could order a coffee, was another child, dressed in a comparatively clean uniform, holding a plastic tray and a rather soiled rag with which he cleaned the table. As I watched him do that, (he did it rather mechanically), my thoughts wandered home, where, when I was his age, my parents did that for me, and now that I am their age, I do that for my children, for there's something about children, that makes us want to do something for them.

Maybe it's a combination of their innocence, their gaiety, their complexity expressed simply, their smiles, their appearance, their responsiveness, their ability to come up with the most interesting take on events around them - I dont know what, but when I see children, doing for me, what I should have been doing for them, I'm reminded of how much I have regressed as an adult, to the extent, that I'm immune to seeing them wiping the table for me or begging in the street?... except perhaps when it is my child.

There's something about children, that shows, when you see how they love - freely and with great passion. No barriers, no holding back, no race, no color, no creed. Just stand in the basement of an apartment complex and watch them play and you'll come away invigorated. There are no manipulations, no greed, no lies and very little jealously. Everything is not hunky dory though. There is hurt, if they are not loved in return, there is reservation, if they are repressed and there is suffering and manifestation, if they are abused and suicidal tendencies when they are unable to cope with parental and peer pressures.

While the transformation from larvae into butterflies, is painful, the tragedy is, that the beauty inside fades, and, while the skin outside remains vibrant, the adult, becomes everything the child was not - Jealous, greedy, manipulative, acquisitive, as he builds all kinds of barriers around him in the name of self protection.

The world is made for children, not for adults - just look around you at nature, its beauty and its openness - but adults took it over and made it their own. They subdued nature, concertized it and then went after its children, using them as mules, as outlets for their aggression - both sexual and physical and to deny them the chance to dance in the rain. Perhaps, they did not want the child in them to rear its head, for there's something about children, you can't suppress.

But as we age, the child in us will reemerge. We will look around again for the affection, the help, the emotional and physical support that we got when we were children, but this time, from our children. We must be aware, however, that we might not get it – certainly not in the way we gave to our children, for the world has moved on relentlessly. Hope lies eternal, but is often belied, by circumstances.

Nevertheless, there’s something about children that tells us we must do right by them, if we want to heal the world and make it a better place. 

Newskarnataka link

Minors committing Major crimes - can they be reformed in three years?

Rape is a heinous crime.  And when a rape victim is also brutalized and killed, it becomes both heinous and monstrous.  For first, they take away your dignity, then they inflict pain, and finally destroy the universal human right that everyone is born with – the right to live.

On December 16th 2012, Asha and Badri Singh’s lives changed forever. As parents of the 23-year-old Nirbhaya, a  physiotherapy student, they were in for dreadful shock, when news of their daughter’s condition reached them after she was raped and thrown out of a moving bus, via a telephone call from the police.

Nirbhaya had suffered rape and brutalization for 90 minutes – unimaginably so and was then thrown naked out on the street. She died 13 days later in a Singapore hospital, her parents by the side of their only daughter. She soon became ‘India’s daughter’, but India has not changed one bit after the incident according to Nirbhaya’s mother. Recent incidents prove her right.  Only last month, a two-and-a-half year child was brutally raped, allegedly by two minors in the capital.    

Six ‘men’ committed the crime. One died in custody. Four were sentenced to death by hanging, a sentence that has not yet been carried out. The sixth male was a juvenile at the time. He was 17 years old – on the cusp of legal maturity.  In other words, he was too young to be punished for the heinous and horrendous crime, as per the Juvenile Justice Act 2000.  He was sent to a correctional institution. He is due to be released on December 21st.  Has he suffered the consequences of his action? Certainly not, is the opinion of most. Has he learnt from his misconduct? Only time will tell.

His impending release has torn the scabs off old wounds and revived the debate on whether he should have been punished like an adult.

Nirbhaya's parents react

Asha and Badri Singh, Nirbhaya’s parents, now live in a different part of Delhi, in a modest apartment given to them by the state after their daughter’s death. An upset Asha, told Rosita Boland of the Irish Times, “The juvenile will be released on December 21st, and he will be treated like a hero here to all the other kids. They will see that you can commit this heinous crime before you are 18 and you can go unpunished.”

Nirbhaya’s mother told CNN-IBN separately, that allowing the 20-year-old from Badaun, Uttar Pradesh to leave the reform home ‘sends out a wrong message’. “Juveniles will now think they can do whatever they want, and get away with it,” she added. PTI quoted her as asking, “But did he reform? Thousands of girls are being raped across the country. What has changed?”

Nirbhaya’s mother said: “They say that his rights as a juvenile have to protected. What about us? Are we not citizens, don’t we have rights? And what about Nirbhaya’s rights? Doesn’t she deserve justice? Don’t we deserve justice? I appeal to the government to not allow this to happen. If he roams free we will be sending a wrong message to others."

Meanwhile, Nirbhaya’s father told PTI “He may go out and commit another crime and if he does, it will be due to shortcomings on the government's part”.

The Government's view

The Union Government’s Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi, who was at the forefront of the demand to amend the Juvenile Justice Act 2000, because of the Nirbhaya case, also couldn’t hide her apprehension. She said  “He is a person who should be kept under watch. We can't just let him go and wait for him to do something else,” she cautioned.

However, Gandhi also added that justice should not be confused with the law. “The law said that he could only go to children’s home. That's the anomaly we are trying to correct. So, he served his sentence and in according to the law he is coming out. And there is nothing we can do about it until or unless he commits another crime.”

Activists though disagreed with Gandhi and called her choice of words poor and provocative. They expressed the apprehension that the  perpetrator’s life may be threatened on his release, by such provocative statements. Krishnan, a member of CPI(ML), said, “Such provocative statements won't help and may put the convict's life in threat in the form of societal retribution following his release. There should be monitoring, but from the point of view of whether he is being properly rehabilitated or not instead of spying on him," she said.

The debate continues

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Bill 2015, that was approved by the Lok Sabha on May 7th 2015, allows for juveniles between the ages of 16 to 18 years to be tried in adult courts if they are found to commit any heinous crimes. According to the proposed law, matters are to be presented to the Juvenile Justice Board on a case-by-case basis, which will then decide — based on an assessment of the mental state of the child — whether the crime was committed with/without an understanding of its consequences.

The standing committee expressed reservations over its content, arguing that “existing juvenile system is not only reformative and rehabilitative in nature but also recognizes the fact that 16-18 years is an extremely sensitive and critical age requiring greater protection. Hence there is no need to subject them to different or adult judicial system as it will go against articles 14 and 15(3) of the Constitution.”But the government, prompted by Gandhi, overruled it. The women’s and children welfare ministry, argued that safeguards were in place to ensure that a child who had committed a crime without fully understanding its consequences would not be penalized.

The Act has yet to get the assent of the Rajya Sabha - Political parties are divided on support to the bill. However, with the debate heating up, due to the impending release of the Juvenile rapist, political parties may be compelled to display political correctness, overruling their own internal contradictions.  If passed, the debate may rest for a while.

On the other side, and possibly proving the standing committee right, the convicted juvenile has, according to reports become a model inmate. He has been offering prayers and fasting according to his religious persuasion and is generally well behaved. But whether he is reformed or not is not yet clear – He is afraid of being lynched upon release, a fate that befell an adult accused of rape in Manipur recently.  

Correctional centre Superintendent Premoday Khakha says, "I feel a person can be transformed at any age and we can't punish all minors harshly for a heinous crime committed by a few".

The crucial question, is whether, when minors commit major crimes, they are fully in control of what they are doing or they are pushed into committing such crimes by internal factors – mainly emotional and a poor superego - beyond their control. I would say, at that age, yes. The debate goes on even as victims suffer. 

Newskarnataka Link