Cheater

Today an unheard of incident happened in our class. What was it well it was the fact that cheating material was found from the girls toilet. Cheating and girls somehow do not go together though every boy who is studying will tell you that girls are just as likely to cheat as boys. Even I know this but I never felt that girls will stoop to this level. Anyways the problem that we face is that the culprit will never be caught simply because the notes were never found in her possession. Even if the handwriting matches the person concerned can say that someone else was using her notes. This gets my goat, why you say? The reason is very simple that in the first semester exams a very dear friend of mine had a cheating case made against him because he was talking in class. Let me be the first to say that I am not going to make a distinction between these two cases both are unfair means afterall, whether you ask or use chits cheating is cheating. But the point being that the girl here, I think everyone in class knows who the culprit is but will not say it for lack of proof, will get away. This I feel is wrong, the teachers will never try hard to prosecute her simply because she is a girl. This is where the hypocrisy of the system comes in, arent girls and boys supposed to be equal shouldn't girls and boys be treated equally. Shouldn't this girl be prosecuted then and made to face the consequences of her actions?Why, you ask,am I vehemently against this girl because its almost a given thatI myself have cheated sometime in my life and if I talk of fairness then shouldn't I be praying to god to treat me like I want this girl to be treated, am I not being a hypocrite? The plain and simple answer to this question is YES, I am being one and the reason being that I do not like this person very much. This person is the sort of human being whom I blame for most of the ills of the world, selfish, hypocritical and what not. (I am proud to say that I consider myself only a hypocrite) This is why I am so angry that this person will not get caught. But I have faith in the big guy upstairs he works in mysterious ways. His ways may also mean that one day I'll get caught when I cheat ( hope not) but it might also mean that the person who cheated will be hanged.

Is ahimsa my parmo dharma?

Recently one of my friends sent me a link to a blog that his friend writes. The post that he wanted me to read was on the recent riots in Tibet. The blogger had said that ahimsa was the most important thing and that violence can never be justified. His comments were meant as much for the Chinese authorities as for the Tibetans. That set me thinking did I believe in his philosophy considering that I am from the land of Gandhi? The answer that came to my mind was 'NO'. I do not believe in the concept that Gandhi promoted. Yes, the shastras say that we should not commit acts of violence but they also say that when the situation becomes unbearable we should act with ruthlessness. Remember the Mahabharata, the Pandavas tried to avoid war at all costs saying that they will stop the war if Duryodhana gave them 5 villages. But when the evil one did not even accept this the only outcome was war. When Arjun was questioning himself that should he fight the war in which the other side was full of his loved ones, Lord Krishna told him that he should harden his heart and kill because that was the only way in which evil was going to be defeated. The same should apply to the situation in Tibet. The Chinese have taken away the independence of the Tibetan people and in my books their cannot be any crime worse than that. they have systematically tried to destroy the Tibetan culture, settling more Han Chinese in the occupied land so that the in time the Tibetans themselves may become a minority in their own country. And when these oppressed people resort to violence should they be condemned. NO they should not be because it is righteous anger. The Dalai Lama makes me sick to my stomach when he says that the Tibetans should not resort to violence. That he wants autonomy within the Chinese state. Dream on, the Communist Party will never accede to this demand. Can't he see what the Chinese are doing in Xinjiang, where they are oppressing the ethnic Uighurs because they also want independence.The Tibetans need a new political leader to take on the Chinese, a person who will not cringe when ruthlessness is required. Then and then only will the Tibetans get their motherland back. I'll end with a conversation from the movie Munich, its a paraphrase, Eric Bana asks a palestinian terrorist why he is against Israel and he says simply, the Jews have a homeland but when I go back I do not. No land to call home, no land to call it my country. This is the feeling when you are enslaved and to break the shackles any means are justified.

My Identity

Around three weeks back I went to my village to attend my cousin sister's wedding. And what can I say it was an eye-opening experience for me. Since my childhood whenever anyone used to ask me, "son where are you from?" my standard reply used to be Garhwal, and after we got statehood it used to be Uttarakhand. This despite the fact that I was born and brought up here in Delhi and that I rarely visited that place. For me going to my village always I always used to be a hassle, I went only when I was forced to. I used to feel like a pseudo sometimes but mostly i was confused. My identity was torn between my roots and the metropolitan city that is Delhi. It was like the surreal world in which all hill people live, a world in which we can talk to our Gods through human instruments that live between us, a world where Gods roam between us. But this time when i went to my village I finally got the sense of belonging I was looking for. The traditions that were supposed to be a part of my life, I finally came face to face with them. Whether it be the Gods that entered my relatives when the groom arrived, or whether it be the funny spectacle of the village girls hurling abuses at the groom and his party all night for taking their friend away, or whether it be the doli in which my sister was taken away to the groom's village. All this and the love people gave me made me realize that I elong to this place and this place only. Magical realism is the word that best describes the existence of the people of the hills and going back there made me realize that, the things that Garcia marquez writes about in his books do happen, and that places like that do exisat and I belong to one of those magical places on the face of this earth. In the end I would say that when I heard a Garhwali song which talked about the doli of the gods dancing on its own I used to think 'it can't happen', now it is a phenomenon that is both logical and magical. And even though i have never spent much time with my cousin who got married I thank her because its her marriage that got me my Identity. My love for that place is her gift to me.