Once Obama'time in Bombay...

South Bombay has never looked as spruced up and beautifully botoxed as it does right now. Like a readying bride awaiting her grom's arrival, the south of the city has been ornamentally decked with freshly relaid roads, fashionable street furniture, bright well-lit promenades, side walks, groomed to display pruned and manicured bylanes, public gardens,  lawns and, richly draped in green hues across the wide open brown spaces in keeping with the prevailing fashionable flavour of environmental chutzpah and chic!

The groom's arrived. Obama's here! Band, baaja, baraat et al. Aurr mehmaan-nawaazi ka kya kehna...uff, it'd put any blue blooded Punjabi shaadi to shame! Dekho to jaano paaji. This is the land of 'Atithi Devo Bhavo' after all!

All it takes is one visit from the President of the United States to jumpstart our bureaucracy, administration and babudom into the thick of electrifying action. Action, with startling results and, in minimal turn around times, mind you! It's so unbelievable, that I'm still lost figuring whether I'm more surprised by the quantum of work that got done over the past month in the run up to the Prez's arrival or,  impressed by the sheer outcome of the results achieved. Either ways, the one fact that coherently emerges from all of this 'abracadabra' of turntail transformation  - and we've known this all along now - is, that we definitely have the resources to execute action in our quest for desired results. What we lack is the willingness and the discipline to sustain the needed momentum in the face of routine.

And so, while many may crib about the inconveniences that the city's been put up to due to the US Prez's visit, seen as ill-timed given that it coincides with Diwali, one of India's biggest festivals, thereby putting paid to may a festive celebration in the city, I silently smile...watching my city, looking lovelier by the minute, blush with pride as she's painstakingly bedecked in bridal finery awaiting her big moment in time.

The groom's arrived. Obama's here...band, baaja, baraat et al! May his tribe increase!

Roy-ter Speak

Quite frankly, I'm amused and a tad beleaguered at the recent press coverage and political outcry over Arundhati's Roy's remarks on Kashmir. 'Seditious' and 'anti Indian' howled the media and the political class. How smugly self-serving and convenient indeed!

While, Roy may have overstated her case in suggesting that India is an occupying power that imposes its rule on Kashmir through torture, brutality and rape, she can't be labelled a traitor by any far measure. Her concern in connection with the state resorting to violence to kill violence, at the cost of violating fundamental rights and basic human dignity in the valley, is valid and, holds good in India as it would in any other democracy across th globe. Roy may have chosen strong words, in keeping with her characteristic style, but worrying about her remarks having serious consequences on the socio-political fabric of Indian society, is taking it too far.

A regional right wing political party head, known to have moulded his career in politics based on incitingly fiery speeches, even today continues to unabashedly provoke his partymen to not just take the law into their hands, but more often than not define the law for the land and forcibly play it out too. His speeches, partisan for the most part, are hard hitting, below the belt and slanderously libellous against individuals and religious minorities to say the least.  Indoctrinated by an ideology whose time has long since past, the party head has constantly encouraged the politics of caste and religious genocide, only to gain political mileage and votes.

All this is very 'Indian' by no means seditious I suppose, since at no point in time then or now have I once heard the media or political class even blinker about curtailing the right to this individual's right to freedom of speech. Strange no? If a curtailment, as is being mandated against Roy by these very folks, was ever warranted, it would first have to be mandated against this man. There is strong justification and documented evidence for it too. But no! Nothing of the sort has ever happened this far and the man continues to roar as and when it pleases him. It happens all the time, where politics is concerned, especially that of caste. So why now then, when there is absolutely no reason to believe that Roy's statements will have any such larger consequences, or fuel public outrage are these folks crying hoarse about curtailing the right to an individual's freedom of speech? Beats me, really. A case of different strokes for different folks, I'm guessing or, pure double standards, if you please.

To quote Vir Sanghvi, from his though provoking Op-Ed, in the Hindustan Times, last Sunday: while the principal of freedom of expression of speech can be curtailed on grounds of sedition, the principal of freedom of expresssion is far more important than any individual. Such curtailment should only be restricted to those times when there is real threat to the unity and integrity of the country. Point to be noted Tiger.