Tag: jatin sharma

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Bura maano, Holi hai!

Jatin Sharma is aghast at people’s moronic behaviour during Holi, and wonders why they forget basic decency while having fun.

Holi stands apart from all the other festivals in India. For starters, Holi is the only festival in which, instead of wearing new clothes, we head out the door wearing our old tattered ones. For another, it is the most mischievous festival of the country. In fact, the statement ‘Bura na maano, Holi hai’ pretty much explains everything that is allowed in the name of Holi.

Holi is one festival where everybody has the ‘license’ to tease others in society. But in recent times, people have forgotten the most important aspect of Holi: it is still a festival.

By itself, a festival is supposed to spread sweetness and light, and Holi also does that. A festival is meant to bring society together to share good thought and happy moments. But as time goes by, everyone has turned Holi into a joke holiday tinged with cruelty.

People are now looking at Holi as a festival that gives them the chance to harass and torture others, sometimes complete strangers. How else do you explain the use of polythene bags in place of balloons or oil paints instead of gulaal? The simple gulaal-and-water routine of Holi has now given way to Chinese colours and rain dances. And the ‘festivity’ starts even before the day of revelry, with groups of people hitting the terraces of their buildings and aiming for people on the streets, especially those who are well-dressed and probably going for job interviews.

The more I see it, the more it begins to appear that the only reason we use these strange colours during Holi is so that we can laugh at others for the next 10 days as the colours refuse to fade quickly. And certain men should just go ahead and announce that the only reason they participate in the festival is so that they can touch women inappropriately in the guise of celebration.

We have become such hooligans with this festival, not caring how people will suffer for our five minutes of enjoyment. We aim for moving bikes, trying to hit the rider as hard as we can with our water balloons, not realising that we are putting the rider at risk of death or blindness with our antics. We put fear in the hearts of several girls who fear being molested in the name of Holi. We deliberately colour somebody’s head so that he or she has to keep washing their hair for a week, and still find colour with each wash.

Let alone human beings, our moronic behaviour extends to targetting animals as well. Painted dogs and tattooed cows are becoming a common sight post-Holi in recent years.

If we are one those characters who use pakka rang, or waste water, or paint animals, or throw balloons on passers-by or molest girls, we should be ashamed of ourselves. On the one hand, we try to show the world that we are a decent society that stands against the atrocities on women, but on the other, we go ahead and molest women in fun. On the one hand, Maharashtra is going through a severe drought, which we discuss during our smoke breaks at work, but on the day of the revelry, we will still waste water because it is ‘only for one day, so it’s okay’.

We say we love animals, but we think colouring them green, yellow and red is funny. We talk of donating our eyes and urge others to do so too, but we think nothing of blinding others with chemical colours.

The hypocrisy in our society has made us forget the actual fun and frolic of Holi, and that it is a festival of colours to be celebrated with goodness and innocence. It should make people and animals feel safe, and let them rejoice without having to look over their shoulders.

Most importantly, it should be celebrated in the spirit that Lord Krishna celebrated it with. He would have hated our silver and green chemical colours, and He would never put oil paints on gopis. And He definitely wouldn’t put gulaal on his cow.

This year, celebrate Holi to spread happiness, and not to target people. And if you’re still looking at it as an excuse to harass people, then to everyone else I say, please, bura maano, Holi hai.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

(Picture courtesy telegraph.co.uk)

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Ignore that begging hand

Jatin Sharma is annoyed by beggars who play on his emotions to make money, instead of looking for honest work.

Begging was once a destiny. Now it’s a profession – it’s a chosen way of life, for all the shameful (and shameless) ones who are lazy in life.

A long time ago, Mumbai was fortunate to have real beggars, who gave you blessings, who were grateful for your help, who were really laachar and bebas. But not any more. Nowadays, when I look at beggars, I don’t see people I want to help. I see people I want to avoid, run away from because they are so utterly irritating. They desensitise every emotion in me; or maybe it is because I cannot, or don’t want to, feel another man’s pain any more.

I strictly feel that all the beggars from the city should be banned and at least in Mumbai we should act on those who beg, because begging really is illegal. For those who think I am being both brutal and politically incorrect, I would only like to say: pick a beggar and observe him/her for a week. Then you will understand  how organised the entire process of begging is. 

This has nothing to do with me being born in a better family and having more opportunity than other, less fortunate ones. Yes, I agree that these beggars didn’t get a good life like me, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of their lives should continue to be devoid of opportunity. If we continue to feel bad for them, they will continue to be beggars. Our pity is their salary.

Secondly, I have met several beggars in Mumbai and I have come to a conclusion: they are beggars not because God wants them to be, but because they want to be.

In Mumbai, no man who is willing to work will beg. And even if he has to beg – some people are victims of circumstance, being swindled out of all their money, or being abandoned by family in their old age, to state just two reasons – at least he should not irritate my city and her visitors from outside. The so-called beggars of my city are a disgrace to the financial capital of my country. And no, I don’t think that there are any individual beggars in the city, they work as a part of a larger mafia now.

They have taken over every traffic signal, every religious place and every transport station, and have slowly taken over the city. They approach people with bandaged hands that are soaked in red-coloured water, they rub their saliva on their faces to pass it off as tears, and touch people’s feet not to arouse pity in them, but a feeling of revulsion and annoyance, so that they get some money.

Take the example of the Gateway of India beggars. Most of them, exposed as they are to the constant barrage of foreign tourists thronging the site, can speak English, a smattering of French, and several other languages. They can almost correctly guess the nationalities of the visitors and have designed their begging strategies accordingly – one of which is to allot areas to people fluent in a language spoken by the foreigners most likely to frequent that area. Tell me, for a person clever enough to pick up a formal language without formal training, is it so difficult to use that cleverness in an honest trade and make honest money? Why is such a person still begging?

Begging has now evolved into a fine art. In fact, beggars are so organised and their work so scientifically carried out, I wouldn’t be surprised if a contingent of beggars was not some day invited to lecture B-students about efficiency and marketing themselves.

It’s not begging any more. Little children, unwashed and sometimes physically deformed, come up to you and ask for food. The moment you give them food, they go and sell it! Some of them are emphatic that they want money, not food, so that they can go buy some chemical to sniff at and get high, or else do cheap drugs with other children their age. Most children have to surrender the money they make from begging to a common pool each evening, from which he/she gets an equal share as allotted by the dada that controls them.

Nobody says much against them, because in India, we are an emotional lot. And we have let this menace of begging get out of hand; we have allowed it to become an organised, well-paying activity that is both demeaning and exploitative. While we have been quick to protest against the evils of drinking or prostitution, we have not been as strict with begging. As a developing country, we should be ashamed that so many of our countrymen are beggars, that so many of our young children are street urchins with no present and not much hope at a future. We hear cases of parents pushing their children out of their homes to beg – what do we do after hearing these stories?

And why would we? At the risk of sounding really harsh, let me say that at some point in all our lives, we have all begged – begged with police officers to forgive our mistakes, begged with teachers to give us grace marks and pass us, begged to be promoted, begged for another chance…begged and begged again. We excel at playing the victim card repeatedly, just to get what we want, and if we have to beg to do it, we will. Heck, we even use the term ‘beg, borrow, steal’ really easily in our normal conversation, sometimes in front of our impressionable children.

What really stops us, a country that supplies a lot of labour and technology to the rest of the world, from taking a stand? Do we lack the spine for it? Do we not have the power to set things right? Is it because we accord emotions the first priority in everything?

Is this what makes us let the beggars be, the politicians continue to scam unabated, let the country run the way it is being run? Or is it because we are too afraid to let new thoughts, however radical or tough, come to life and breathe?

Let your new thoughts take seed and grow. Don’t give out largesse to someone just because he/she makes a sad face and asks for it. Don’t pay these actors on the roads. Avoid. Ignore. And ban! 

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

(Picture courtesy rottenview.blogspot.com)

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Iss English ki toh…

Jatin Sharma takes up the cudgels on behalf of the non-English speakers, wondering why we’ve become lingual terrorists against them.

“Oh , he is such an idiot, doesn’t even know English.”

“Do you know she just said, ‘I don’t riks my life’?”

“His English grammar is pathetic.”

These are some lovely lines that have fallen on my ears time and time again. In fact, once while I was at a production house to meet a friend, waiting for the lift to arrive, I heard someone shouting. It was a woman, about 30 years old, and she was talking, no, shouting at someone over her phone. Since my lift hadn’t arrived yet, I took the chance to listen in on this screaming person.

What I heard shocked me. The girl was yelling at her mother for coming to her birthday party to surprise her, because the girl was embarrassed. Why? Because her  mother couldn’t speak English. The girl felt really bad when her mother tried to speak English in her front of her friends, and failed with a line. She felt even worse when her friends laughed.

Before hanging up the phone, the girl said, “You are such an embarassement, mom. Learn English.”

My lift arrived. As I entered it, I began to wonder: why would someone feel elated or dumb, happy or sad, secure or insecure in this world only on the basis of them (or somebody else) knowing or not knowing how to speak English? Since when, and why, has English become so important, that we have started judging people on the basis of the language they speak? Why has the world forgotten to dwell on the importance of good thought?

Language, as I know it, is a tool to express and understand your thoughts. It doesn’t matter whether it is Hindi, Gujarati, Urdu, Punjabi, Marathi, English, French, Italian or Pashto. No doubt that English is what most of the people in the world speak today, but judging other people and their talent on the basis of their fluency in English is just ridiculous. You can rejoice if someone’s English is extraordinary, but making fun of people who don’t know English is just demeaning them.

A rickshawwallah from Benaras once told me, “Angrez chale gaye, angrezi chhod gaye! Pehle angrez ke ghulam the, aaj angrezi ke ghulam ban rahe hain (the English have gone, but they have left English behind! Englishmen ruled us, and now English is making us its slaves.)” He was very happy that he cared for people more than the language they spoke. I asked him about his education. He said that he never attended school, but that he is still literate because he knows not to judge people.

“Angrezi bolne se koi vidvaan nahin banta, Shiva ko angrezi thode hi aati thi! (Nobody is intelligent because they can speak English, did Lord Shiva speak English?)” he said. I knew I was going to remember these words for a lifetime.

We judge each other on the basis of how well we speak English, and we are brazen enough to laugh at people who don’t speak it well. Has anyone realised that English is a foreign language? It became a world language only because of the British man’s rule all over the world. They made slaves out of other people and became rich by looting and plundering. So there’s nothing to feel proud of if you speak their language well.

And if you think that the British can speak English well because they are British, think again. I once met a girl in India – she was from England – and when I read her diary, the first thing I noticed was that she couldn’t even spell the word ‘sympathetic’. I laughed in my head; if she had been Indian, I would have just pointed at her and laughed aloud, making her feel really stupid about not knowing how to spell an English word.

Let a language be a language. Don’t make it a tool to judge a person. We are Indians, we are doing great in the world. Our culture is already awesome, packed as it is with so many languages. We have Sanskrit, which is forgotten in our country but which is becoming really popular in Germany. We have the Vedas, and we are the fathers of yoga, which is a phenomenon all over the world.

So what I’m trying to say is, it’s okay if Indians behave like Indians. Why try to turn them into Englishmen and Americans?

And while we’re on the subject, I want to point out that the English language itself has some fundamental flaws of pronunciation. I still don’t know how you can have a ‘p’ at the start of a word and say it is silent. I still haven’t figured out why certain words have similar spellings and completely different pronunciations. Also, why is the word ‘the’ pronounced differently in two different situations? And why did the British change the names of our cities; are these names so difficult to pronounce? I can say Kolkata and Calcutta equally well, so why can’t they?

A language, its writing and its pronunciation, must have a science driving it. Hindi has a science backing its words. Sanskrit is a flawless language, the main reason why the Germans are planning to programme their computers with it, because it has no errors.

Again, look at the French and how proud they are of their language. You don’t find them laughing at their own countrymen for not knowing English. Look at the Chinese; the Premier of their country takes a translator along on his trips and tells the world that he is a proud Chinese.

Yes, English is required for progress. But we have to be supportive of those who can’t speak English and who prefer to speak in Indian languages. No language is more superior than another. Languages are meant to connect hearts and minds. So don’t become a lingual terrorist, hating people left, right and centre just because they are incapable of speaking English. Listen to their thoughts and not their words. And while you’re doing so, take pride in yourself, rather than the person you are trying to be.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because he believes that if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

(Picture courtesy ascentinstitute.org)

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Pedestrian pains

Jatin Sharma recently bought a new car, and he has lost respect for pedestrians already. Read on to know why.

When you buy a new car, you want to respect pedestrians. Mostly because you were one of them before you got your mean machine.

I recently got a new car. In my new-found love for pedestrians hoofing it while I drove by in style, I stopped at every signal, and when I would see them waiting to cross, I would drive to the side of the road and apply the brakes – only to realise that they were not always equally considerate towards me. They would keep crossing one after the other, and others would just jump out after seeing me stop for others. It was almost like it was a race to see who would cross in my front of my car first.

Another time, all the cars were whizzing by and no one was letting the pedestrians cross. My new good-driver soul made me stop. But instead of being thankful, everyone while passing started throwing abuses at me. They vented their frustration at having waited a long while, on me. Me, the guy who had stopped and let them cross. All of them looked at me in anger, also pulling a lot of faces.

This is a good time to insert a quote from Lawrence S Harris: ‘Are we taking drunken drivers off the road to turn them into drunken pedestrians?’ 

I  admit  that I just Googled this quote and I have no idea who Lawrence S Harris is and when he quoted this. But I am putting it out here because it is apt to what I’m about to say next.

Yes, pedestrians have every right to curse, abuse and torment the drivers in our country.  It has been observed that our country lacks basic discipline and respect for traffic rules. Whether it is lane-cutting or rash driving or the, ‘Yeh rasta mere baap ka hai‘ attitude of a driver, our traffic situation is clearly based upon the law of the jungle. Whoever is bigger and powerful rules the roost. It’s that law of nature where the smaller car is bullied by the bigger car, or the bigger bus, or the biggest truck.

But the law of the jungle falls flat when it comes to the pedestrian. Jaywalking is the pedestrian’s favourite pastime and the moment someone is going to hit them, they will not look for logic or the fault of their actions, it directly becomes the question: “Yeh carwale /H@#$zaade samajhte kya hain khud ko?”

Pedestrians labour under the delusion that averting accidents is just a driver’s responsibility. Pedestrians in our country like to jump over dividers and even land on the bonnet of a passing car suddenly. Every time it happens, I wait for at least one of these clowns to jump out with a bugle in hand and yell, “SURPRISE!”. Most pedestrians don’t even realise that the person inside the vehicle is manoevering a machine that is at least 100 times his weight, and he needs to stop it mechanically in order to avoid a disaster.

And if the driver goes wrong even by a whisker, the world and its mother rushes out to bash him up without asking whose fault it was. Our country has so many rules and regulations for drivers, but when it comes to pedestrians, there’s nothing, so we can just hope that each of us is a brilliant driver who can handle any situation. The driver can’t speak on the phone while driving and can’t be drunk behind the wheel and he/she needs to have a seat belt on, but the pedestrian can be drunk and on merrily talking on the phone and can basically get away with anything. 

And there are some pedestrians who make you talk to the hand. Literally. These are what I like to call the Ichchadhari Traffic Police; the moment they want to cross the road, they stroll across it with a hand raised. This species of pedestrian is deaf to honking cars and do not even acknowledge the driver of the car that has braked suddenly to avoid knocking him down. 

I’ve recently learnt that cars and pedestrians contribute to the traffic nuisance in our city in equal measure. Drivers are at fault several times, but pedestrians too need to be a little lenient towards drivers. They need to realise that a guy handling a vehicle must be under tremendous pressure. The pedestrian should try and avert small mistakes, too. He should not pretend to be a hero, leaping across the dividers and catching drivers off guard. 

We are a country that lacks basic infrastructure and courtesy when it comes to traffic rules. But then, the onus is on the people of the country to formulate those rules in order to make road usage beneficial for everyone. A country changes by the attitude of its people. But somehow, when people come out on the roads, either behind the wheel or on their feet, they instantly enter into a competition to see who reaches his/her destination first. 

There is no need to be in a perpetual road race. If we all become considerate about each other on the roads, the day will be come when even in India, drivers would love to stop their car and let the pedestrian cross the road. For now, if the drivers do that, they are only sitting waiting for people to stop crossing the road and let him pass, since the light turned green ages ago.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everyone else.

(Picture courtesy blogs.seattleweekly.com)

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The killing of a poster boy

Jatin Sharma wonders if Afzal Guru was really a terrorist, or yet another name in a disenchanted Valley. Or both.

Before reading this column, I have a request to make of you.

I request all of you to junk all the images that you have in mind, shed all your preconceived notions that have been served by the media, remove all the biases and the prejudices that you may have developed over the years.

Be untainted by the ‘truths’ of the world, unmoved by the emotions that the media has garnered and for the next few minutes, think that you are in an ideal world.

Now that your mind is sufficiently cleared of your personal feelings, read on.

Centuries ago, the world was divided into kingdoms. India was a land that was akin to a sone ki chidiya. See, already I can feel the pride that you are feeling right now. Your chin went up by an angle of 10 degrees, and you just inflated your chest. But the truth is, the time when India was the fabled golden sparrow, its people were still ailing. The people had no food and were constantly at the mercy of their kings. While the kings fought wars once in a while to double or safeguard their riches, the common man fought every day for food and other necessities. Whenever the king was challenged by a common man, either that man was sent to confinement or was silenced forever. His crime? Disrespecting the king.

Centuries later, the world is divided into countries. India is a land known as an ‘upcoming superpower’. There, I can feel the pride that you are feeling right now. Your chin went up by an angle of 10 degrees, and you just inflated your chest. But the truth is, that while India is an upcoming superpower, its people are still ailing. The people don’t have the freedom to express themselves (writing a blog is not something major, and even this column is not that big a change) and live a life where they are not at the mercy of the police, the bureaucrats and the politicians. While the politicians are letting us protest over lesser issues (like rape, as no politician is involved in that high-profile case; Lokpal, as they know a Bill will only be passed with their consent or a diesel-petrol hike, because they know they will decrease 50 paise and all will be well); the common man is fighting every day to be heard. Whenever the government is challenged by a common man, either that man is tagged as a threat to the nation, or a terrorist, or a Maowadi.

There are hundreds and thousands of stories of oppression on the people, by the people in power. We fear FIRs, as we fear that we would be tortured instead of the culprit. We fear going to politicians as they will tell us to shell out money or leave the matter like it is. We fear questioning bureaucrats because they know that they can’t be replaced till the time that they decide to retire. We fear the election process because we are afraid of the gallery of dacoits we have to choose from.

Are we really free then? Are we really an awesome country, if our ‘safe’ blogs will just be discussed and dismissed? Are we a free country if till the time I follow what those in power want me to follow, I am safe? Are we a free country if the moment someone questions things, we term them terrorists?

Afzal Guru was hanged the same way that Kasab was. But the difference is that Afzal Guru was an educated man, an MBBS student who had surrendered to the BSF.

My point is: no amount of money can lure you to be a traitor unless there is a long pending issue that the Government has ignored for long. No amount of money can force you to insult your motherland unless the kings of democracy let people come out and hear them out without bias. Look at Kashmir – more than anything else, the issue is now an ego tussle between two nations, with the Kashmiris suffering in between. They are hostile, yes, but so is the Government. Right now the people of Kashmir want to protest in the wake of Afzal Guru’s hanging. But the Government has imposed a curfew there, and jammed mobile networks, apart from cutting Internet lines.

When was the last time that people actually responsible for several crimes were brought to book? When two Indian soldiers were beheaded on the border, what did our powerful country do to those who beheaded them? Did our upcoming superpower nation book them in any manner? Forget anything else, were those involved in the beheadings even caught?

A Kashmiri all-girl rock band had to give up music because some idiot issued a fatwa in their name. The government failed then, too. The rape ordinance was passed, but one recommendation was not taken into consideration: that politicians who are rapists should not be able to contest elections. This recommendation was scrapped by the Government, while the rest were approved.

If you think about it, Afzal Guru the terrorist could have been Dr Afzal Guru, and he could have treated several patients in the Valley, but he didn’t. Why not? We should know the entire story before passing a judgement. We should acknowledge that Kashmir is burning every day. Right now they are going through a ban on Internet and mobile services, and not for the first time. How would you feel if that happened to you? To be reminded constantly that you are under somebody’s control, that you would be silenced if you don’t say what is not favourable to the one who controls you?

Terrorism and internal terrorism are two different issues. While terrorism can be tackled with power and force and killings, internal terrorism has to be tackled with love and tact. We rejoice Afzal Guru’s hanging because he was the poster boy for the Parliament attacks. But are we sure that no more Afzal Gurus will erupt from the Valley in the future? Did we really kill an attacker, or did we just kill another name?

I’m sure you’re a bit confused. But your confusion tells me that you are starting to think, and that is most important.

Don’t let the media or a few Facebook statuses and emotionally-charged tweets turn your mind. That is what the people in power want. They want you to be just a tool, a vote that is remembered only once in five years. Think and you start living every day.

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who says he doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

(Picture courtesy indiatvnews.com)

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That thing called God

Jatin Sharma wonders where the line between our faith and the display of our faith begins to blur, and why.

God can be defined in a number of ways. Someone can define God as a superior power, another as faith and someone else as just a personal feeling. I define God as a personal feeling. God is always The One. The One who makes you become a better person. The One who makes you not lose hope even in the worst of the times. The One who makes you take care of each and everything that you come across, and which needs your help.

God was created by Man. Man was created by God. But the whole concept of God has gone haywire these days. Everything around God is not so much about God, but more about Man’s own interpretation of God. God is being manipulated and I think God must feel truly helpless right now. No shashtras or holy books have specified that you need to put up a mammoth display of your worship or prayers. But with each passing day, the actual display of our faith is becoming bigger and bigger. Everybody wants to prove to the world that their faith in their God is bigger than others’. We are not praying to God anymore; we are pandering to a religious ego.

I was in Andheri yesterday, and I saw this gigantic rally on a ‘display rampage’. The rally took place during peak travel hours, and thousands of people, both belonging to the faith or not, were hostages to the whole drama. People were forced to see how ‘cool’ this faith being celebrated was, how amazing it was to worship someone a God like that. Commuters and autorickshawwallahs were reduced to becoming hapless victims of traffic snarls, besides getting really late for work. Plus, there were loudspeakers blaring, and these must have scared a thousand birds and hundreds of street dogs for miles.

Let me remind you that I am in no manner against any particular faith, but the whole public display of one’s faith and one’s God always makes me think about the matter. Are we and our intentions really pure when we want to worship God? I’ve often asked myself: why is a Rs 5,001 worth aarti  bigger than a Rs 1,001 one? Does God have an accountant to keep score of the value of each individual aarti offered and who decides, for God, whose prayers must be answered first? Why is there so much pompousness attached to the most simple thing in the world, this thing called God?

If God is truly in your heart, no one can shake your faith by approving or disapproving your faith, and it simply does not matter how many julooses or holy processions you led amidst growing traffic on the streets. Your faith is like your heartbeat – nobody but you knows it is there, and you can feel it if you pay attention.

And the whole idea of coming together and celebrating one’s faith is perfectly fine, but please, can it be a gathering at a single place to accommodate the like-minded? Don’t go shouting on the road and screaming your lungs out to declare that your God is the best. No doubt he is, and we all respect Him/Her for that. Just don’t go out and make your God a pawn in a competition that decides which God wins. After all, doesn’t your God tell you to win others’ hearts by love and compassion, and not by loudspeakers and competition?

Jatin Sharma is a media professional who doesn’t want to grow up, because if he grows up, he will be like everybody else.

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