Maoists, and Recalcitrant Racism

It may have been popularized by Mao Zedong in the 1950s, but the quote most widely attributed to him has now found the most widespread appraisal in a little known belt of rural homes in East India. “Political power flows from the barrel of a gun” was how it was roughly translated from Chinese, but as everyone who has ever been to Chennai knows…there’s always something lost in translation.
What Mao really meant, and it might sound a bit farfetched but hear me out anyway…was that the only way you can give a bunch of hungry naked people any closure is by giving them a few guns, telling them to blow people’s heads off, and congratulating them as freedom fighters. And where the system fails, is when…you guessed it, they’ve run out of people to shoot. Or alternatively, when the Maoists finally gain power they only dreamed of, sleeping under a banyan tree. Because an idiot under a banyan tree is just an idiot, until you give him a gun. At which point he becomes either a terrorist, or a freedom fighter, or a Maoist…or blows his brains out.
And just like that integral involving all sorts of improper trigonometric terms that you never really cared about anyway…this problem is, in a nutshell, unsolveable. The only way to make a Maoist happy is to give him a gun, and a 100 acre piece of land in which to farm, herd and then shoot people. And, pusillanimous as our government might be, it sure as hell isn’t stupid…okay so maybe it is. Confucius said that anyone who uses a cannon to kill a mosquito is fucking retarded. What Confucius didn’t know was that the Indian government had never heard of him…and was in general not really inclined to take the Chinkies for face value. So, the only thing left to do was to send in the army…which sent out radio messages, posters, TV airtime and newspaper articles describing exactly the strength of the battalions, the guns they were using, and even the brand of underwear they would be wearing on the day they were going to have an encounter.
And result of said encounter? Nine Maoists get killed. Yes, In an area where Maoists recruit by the hundred, or mybe the thousand. In a country, where people are discriminated against by the shade of brown their skin is, Maoists, Leninists, hell even Rapists will find enough people to join their cabal. Yes, because we have not found, and maybe will never find an effective solution to the biggest terrorist threat facing our country today, that of the pissed off Maoist.

Pernicious Profligacy...and too many cooks

So now I've graduated from writing in between classes to in between interns... Not that big a quantum leap, assuredly, but then again...it doesn't take much to make me happy. And now, my thoughts range from the mundane, to the abstruse, in pretty much no consequential order. Let me share them with you(STOP groaning and read)

Like how stupid could the government be?? NOT a rhetorical question. It just struck me as I walked past the ladies lounge today...to go to the gents bathroom, yes.... they are adjacent to each other. I assumed that it was the only way the contractor could justify the expense of placing a frosted glass screen on the lounge doorway. BEcause everyone knows that women would rather not watch men relieving themselves..yes they see enough of that out there on the streets.

And of course, the government(Rahul Gandhi included...you can shoot me if you like later) are a bunch of assholes. Its a well known fact. Like you know an elephant aint gonna fly if you push it over the cliff...and while that mght sound like an absurd metaphor, it really isnt. Just like our government is, a complete white elephant...

Because under the MNREGA or NREGS or whatever fucked up acronym they are calling it these days...the INSIST on hiring 20 people to do a job for 2. The net result being that the 2 who were supposed to do the job just get bored and sit around all day. Lethargy...apathy...plain fucking laziness?? NO.. they just want to look cool. How do you look cool if evryone around you is working?? Simple...put your feet up one that desk and go...HA you fuckers are such SQUARES!! And it looks cool alright...but not when everyone decides to fo0llow suit. But no one notices because they are...you guessed it...busy being cool.

And in an age of quantum mechanics, where some idiot says its absolutely possible for something to exist and not exist at the same time...its really amazing how that works out. Yeah, the same idiot has proved it by executing a computer program..WITHOUT running it. How...you ask? In the words of RIchard Feynman,"WTF?! No one understands quantum mechanics." Which makes quantum physicists either really smart, or very stupid...

The practical upshot is of course...that it might be possible..in the age of quantum mechanics...to be able to work...WITHOUT any actual work. You know who'd be the happiest...

Mass Produced

"They can have the Ford Model T in any colour they want...as long as it's black"
-Henry Ford

Henri Poincare decided a century ago, that science, on its basis, did not constitute fact. The generation of fact from science would be akin to the generation of the script of Titanic from a bunch of monkeys supplied with typewriters. What we live in then, is our version of a world. A version that is most adapted to our convenience. In the same way that it is presumptuous to say that Cartesian geometry is an accurate description of shapes, it is also rather obtuse to say that a mere perusal of scientific method could result in anything other than a prejudiced version of natural phenomena.

What people lack now, however, and this is an effect, though rather sidelong, of the Henry Ford generation, is the nature to be scientifically inquisitive. Over, time we have grown rather mass produced. And this is where, just like Jeffrey Archer's stories, we are introduced to two protagonists. And if you read Jeffrey Archer, you might know rather intuitively which one is going to win out. And he always does. And for those of you going...what the fuck is he on about...I'll get to the point right away...


This, then, is a tale of two Henrys... and a story of independent thought versus mass produced herd thought. And you might be intrigued to know that it is herd thought, that..just like Archer's hero, wins out in the end. The illusion of self accomplishment is what is necessary for further scientific growth of our community. People need to believe that they are going to accomplish something meaningful if they didn't believe in science.

It is not a disillusioned man who produces anything of note to the scientific establishment. It is, in fact, the self satisfied, self aggrandising, scientist who manages to convince himself, and consequently the whole world, that fact..indeed is accurately represented by science. When ipso facto, it is the other way round.

But we are the worst perpetrators of all. With our smugness, and our knowledge, and our shiny IIT degrees, we refuse to accept truth for fact, we do it vice versa. And what used to be a quick way to assemble auto parts has now become the most convenient way of assembling human intellectual resource. Engineers now roll off a conveyor belt.

It is not the Mass Production system at fault. It is our pusillanimity. And our apathy. Towards the Great Intellectual Factory that we revere as our education system.

The Curious Case of Careless Cavaliers

"Write a 500 word essay on road safety" -our 5th grade teacher
"Huh?? Road what now??" -our class

NO!! I did NOT just make that up.

Thats the amount of knowledge that the average 5th grader has about road safety. Now of course, that wouldn't matter much. Except for a little show on television called Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? The stupid one...with Shahrukh Khan in it. And if there's one thing that those precocious little tweens have taught us, its that the average Indian is, in fact... NOT smarter than a fifth grader. Now I hear those gears inside your head beginning to rumble, and before you shout out QED, or Eureka, or some such euphemism for success, i must inform you, that it is sooo NOT our fault.

The role models in our society (no not Shahrukh Khan), our dads, our uncles, our moms, our older brothers, okay...maybe Sharukh Khan too, a little bit... have taught us one thing about rooad safety in this fine country of ours... It DOESNT EXIST... Yes, road safety in India is just like a Suhel Seth column, a minor inconvenience, to be ignored by all and sundry.

This is epitomised by our walking on the left side of the road. Now, the only reason why we walk on the left side is because, in most countries in the world, drivers drive on the right. Hence,in most countries in the world this was used as a safety mechanism, to view the oncoming traffic(Thnks Roshan for the info on that one). However, the smart people who print our books, kept the correct side to wlak on as left, while most of our early cars were right side drive, a side effect of the British Raj. As a result, we end up walking in the direction of traffic, and have no clue whatsoever about oncoming traffic, other than when something hits us of course, from behind.

And here, we also have a saying that goes something like,"BAAP ka RAASTA hai...", and while the idiom does not really guarantee you ownership of a few National Highways, unless you are Kamal Nath's son(not related to me in ANY way..). What it does guarantee, is that most people dont even bother walking anywhere but the center of the road. And of course, we do have more bovine, than human pedestrians here. So that makes it even worse, when you are trying to drive through a narrow road. And well, bikers have not really learnt the significance of overtaking from the left. Faced with acres of road space on the left, and you driving on the extreme right, chances are, the bker will probably zoom past you from the left.

And while its easy to criticise the roads and the people traversing them, I would like to end on a positive note. A friend of mine, who wasnt carrying his license, was accosted by a policeman...paid a bribe, and drove off. Now this would be a pathetic reflection on our society and blah blah... Guess how much the bribe was?? A mighty 5 rupees.. :P :D