The Same Job Yet DIfferent

By the by, why does the child who dances on the streets for coins gets classified under 'child labour' and 'beggary' yet a child who dances in television and cinema screens for currency notes is not classified thus yet only gets glamourized more? And why does the team that makes these children perform on the streets get booked under the "prevention of child labour act" yet the people who employ these children in the entertainment business on screen get away? So does big bucks change the whole scenario here too???

A Thing or Two about Taxes

TWO: Why do we pay taxes?

Me: For our nation's development.
TWO: Can you be more specific when you say "nation"?
Me: Its you and me and the people around; the road, medical care, education et all.
TWO: So, its for human resource and infrastructural development within a particular invisible man-made boundary... right?!
Me: Perfectly put!
TWO: You pay for education and health for HRD and lay roads, telecom, transport et all for infrastructure development... right?
Me: Yes.
TWO: Hmm... Didn't you pay a hefty sum as school and college fees?
Me: Yes, but education is expensive yet not as high as they pay in private institutions.
TWO: Wasn't education supposed to be free especially if it is compulsory?... Now, haven't you paid the money demanded in private hospitals?
Me: Yeah... But then its not that expensive in government hospitals.
TWO: "Not that expensive" is a good line... so there is still a cost involved. However, then why weren't you there?!
Me: Well...
TWO: Aren't you all paying toll charges for the road(s) you travel on though you have already paid road tax, life tax, vehicle tax et all? Aren't you paying taxes on things you buy with an income that has already been taxed?
Me: Yeah right!
TWO: By the by, did you know that the total amount of black money deposited in foreign banks by Indians is estimated at 7,280,000 Crores and the total scam money in India is Rs. 73000000000000 and did you know that this too is a tax payer's money and if the government took some effort to bring these Gandhi notes in, we might actually be able to get tax holidays and be able to handle inflation easily(?); did you also know that each hour of functioning or rather non-functioning of the parliament costs Rs. 25 lakh, this would mean a loss of Rs. 2 crore on a day even when no business is transacted... add up every day our babus find a reason to not work than use the time to do some work... and now that too is tax payer's money. Besides your tax also pays the police who wait for thieves to fall into their hands, the navy who can't defend our fishermen, the airforce who have never used their flights, with no need to bomb, and we spend a whooping 41.3 Billion US$ on military when our expenditure on education is 11.45 Billion US$ and our per capita expenditure on health is about US$ 32 in India, while it is around US$ 4590 in rich countries (more than 140 times). We still have schools without blackboards and teachers and hospitals with no doctors and syringes and villages with no electricity so far... all this after almost six and a half decades of independence.
Me: (coughing)
TWO: And now... Why do we pay tax?!
Me:...

Source:
http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/rs-16-crore-spent-on-kasab-in-3-years-and-still-counting-152238
Nanjappa, Vicky (31 March 2009). "Swiss black money can take India to the top". Rediff.com. Retrieved 23 May 2011
http://projectagya.com/content/indian-scam-no-other-country-can-ever-compete-india-thing-be-really-ashamed
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_parliament-disruption-costs-exchequer-rs2-crore-a-day_1616166
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_India
http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2011-05-17/news/29552018_1_infectious-diseases-life-expectancy-child-mortality

p.c: http://www.i-n-d-i-a-n.com/scams-in-india-value-of-scam-money/

http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/rs-16-crore-spent-on-kasab-in-3-years-and-still-counting-152238

Whats Happeneing...

After the midnight rants, there was something I could find to write about. There is nothing that has affected me in the recent past and that bothers me quite a bit. By the by, my book titled "Taking the higher road..." is waiting to be published and I am waiting for the release. Now, like every one needs a reason to write, I await an inspiration... something that has the power to affect me. Not just a muse or something of that sorts from the realms of a writer; yet something that would bother me, trouble me and make me bring it out without which the soul would be bothered quite a bit... to a point where rest would be impossible. People around are either too plain or too boring and the best at times, explicitly and unconditionally display a combination of both. Now I have to look at objects or things for inspiration... its the same anyway... duh!

This time my rsoulution for my B'day was quite volomnous. Speak less, do more; Eat less, workout more; Hate less, Love more... and so on and so forth; and quite obviously as all resoulutions go, mine turned upside down as well. Doing more of the less and vice versa.

The guy who has been irritating me from across the official corridor, is definitely not an inspiration yet a nuisance. Of late, I have also come to know that he vanishes during the weekends to look at girls his parents pick for him (so I knew someone had to do it for him)... Oh by the by, "girlies!" if there is a son of a bitch at your door and he speaks in malayalam too, beware... it could be this freak. Having issues with his dental outside and an incurable mental inside.

What care do woMen take to pick the sperm-depositer who installs the seed into them... do they even care?! Are all people alike as I try to perceive them or are they all quite different as I expect myself to be? Do woMen have brains at all? Cos' some stupid woMan is going to get these guys who we, the Male community, think are born 'nuts' and even doubt if they have what I just now referred them as and probably try to build a spine around him and try to get him recommended into a Male circle and try to even promote him as a Male rather than have him mocked around and soon get tired of this 'trying'... duh! woMen, woMen, woMen! do they even know?! One stupid feMale i know, said that 'all Men have the same size of penis and so whats the difference?' If only it was true! Duh! woMen! are they as stupid as they often look?!

Recently there was one woMan who was highly commented upon for revealing her bosom through her saree... As usual, I was asked to comment on this signature move by the lady to get the attention she actually needed. Personally, I feel that there is a thin line... a very thin line that seprates vulgarity from sensuality and to me the display of extra fat in an exuberant way was not that sensual and she had an eye and I preferred noticing that to other flubbers popping out.

However, with these kinds of trivial issues happening around, I wish to see if there are better things to be bothered about... am even contemplating to move away from this self-concealed box and enter the crowded world again... one more time.

Bottomline: “I warn you, if you bore me, I shall take my revenge.” J.R.R. Tolkien

Want To Touch Her

Been trying to get some concepts into an idea that emerged... so took a while to sit and blog. However, its nice to see the counter hits increasing. Then about the pondering obviously uncouth (they are mine), think I am trying to have a system in my madness trying to arrange them; so have papers, charts and diaries strewn everywhere and am trying to network between books, transcending between literatures like a child lost in an amusement park. Whatever...

Yesterday, in the night as a friend and I were waving good nights to the kids across the house, we were silenced as we proceeded to hear the winding of my friend-that 9 feet long black cobra-around a cat. Undefinable screaming of the cat found no mercy with the reptile. The silence becoming stronger with every coil... The distant death was profoundly obvious and the mystery of the night camouflaged it quite well. We both looked at each other and said, 'its over'. Just as we said that, we heard a hungry whining of an ambulance speeding across the road. Another somebody at the grip of death... the siren silenced too at a distance. We looked at each other and said, 'think they will reach in time'. Hope and despair... both in silence endured. With every day going by, the coil just getting tighter, the siren just getting louder and death ineveitable.

The kiss of death, like a lover's kiss, a delightful surprize when mutual. Have I feared death? Never! Has death feared me? Suppose not too! Been kissed just as much as I have kissed it too. Never wanted to die several times fearing it-before dying that one time once and for all.

At the moment, I remember that little girl whose mother had died; who never knew what death was-she probably thought that her mother was sleeping a little longer than usual and there was a jobless crowd of people watching her sleep, quite strangely. The next day after the burial, when I felt that reality would have kicked in and she would begin to feel her absence, I went to see her and watch how a little child was coping up with pain. Reached her house and there were people consoling her father. My eyes searched for her and she was invisible. Kept moving till I came to the dining table where on one end her mother's garlanded photograph was kept. With the maximum stretching she could do, she was trying desperately to reach the photo frame (thats how small she was). Just then, I saw her and she saw me. With a relief, she came closer to me, hugged me as usual and asked, "I am trying to reach my mom; can you carry me and take me closer to my mom I WANT TO TOUCH HER". If there was anything that has killed me, this was it. To be in that place and to realize this innocence, even the uncouthed barbarian would have moved. Carried her. She touched. She looked at me and said, 'I miss her'. Tried very hard not to let that drop of tear clouding my eyes not slip away infront of her.

Bottomline: "I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter. " Winston Churchill

Riding In The Dark

Lately, I have been wondering if emotions mean anything. This comes in after sensing the need for others around me wanting to know so much about themselves... Why?

Are we so interesting that we need to ponder so much about ourselves to an extent that we care less for quintessentials around us? So much of self importance required?!

Recently I have been upto some pygmallion- endeavours. However, the result always foreseen, the mind games I wish not to play, the muses I try to keep-all bubbles. The trouble with the mind is that it keeps me facinated to watch the need for people to facinate others by moving inwards or outward, taking rejections, contemplations and wishes to a fine display at all unconsious levels, revealing more than they wish to hide.

Yesterday, strangely, an introvert-masochistic Professor, came out of his shell to ask me if I could lend him some of the books on Psychiatry and Psychology, in a miserable attempt to help him understand the minds of others. Told him that he was too juvenile to read the stuff lying on my table and hence as all mortals do, he proceeds to my reading table to get a glimpse of what I was reading. As expected, he did not fare too well. he said that Horney and Gottman were too confusing and that Freud did not make any sense. The moment someone tells me that Freud does not make sense, it hits me and I wonder questioning the facade of intellectual poverty of such creatures and wish deep from my heart that those sucklings need to go through a rhythymic abandon like a stray bitch and wish that the suffering they are undergoing be aggravated with more fleece up their a%^$e. May be this fellow being a masochist, will sit there to enjoy it. So rather than give him the pleasure of my discontent, I chose to withdraw into the night sans food and soon, a couple of friends, we rode the bikes into the darkness at midnight-for no reason. It was good. Proximity another question that was dwelling in my mind was also sedimenting with the ditches around the corner posing more of an excitement than threat. However, life sans guilt is better than life sans sins.

Bottomline: Reading does not enlighten you... rather it is the enlightenment that makes you read.