Sunset, yet again

As the sun that did indeed shine bright over Year 2007 gets set for the final dip, I guess it’s time for some rewind on what really went on around me all these days. Just stating that year 2007 was good or bad, would be like belittling the great, not-so-great, and despicable events that happened around me and within me.

Personally, 2007 was a year that did great things to my inner self. To be truthful, Year 2007 brought me back to some meaningful reading. Great writers, masters in the English and Malayalam literary worlds opened up in front of me, though not as they used to once upon a time. But considering the fact that I could read again has given me contentment of a different kind. I also went back to Tehelka and have made up my mind to go for a long term subscription.

This year, after a long gap, also brought real music to my ears. I got more of Mohanam, Thodi, Devagandhari, Yadukula Khamboji and Yamuna Kalyani all through the year. I got the chance to return to Brahmanandan and Pattanakkad Purushottaman this year. Gosh, what a feeling!

Books, music and my little daughter’s effortless ease trying to sing along with whatever is music have made the past 360 days seem good for me. These apart, wifey dear and the good friends I made this year come as the best bonus. Thanks one and all, for making me a more confident human being. Believe it or not, Year 2007 saw me fight less, mellow down more.

Mellowing down doesn’t mean that I should not list down what all I hated this year. But then, the hate list, compared to last year, may look shorter. May be the world has turned a better place, or is it that I learnt that hating people or events doesn’t make any sense in real life? Whatever that could be, here’s a list of events and people I hated this year.

* Sonia Gandhi, for mouthing the ‘Maut ka Saudagar’ coinage which helped Narendra Modi bag Gujarat yet again so effortlessly.

* Narendra Modi, for getting the Mahatma’s name all wrong as he kept repeating at poll campaigns the name of one ‘Mohanlal’ Karamchand Gandhi. Hey Ram!

*Ram Gopal Verma for not doing what he is really capable of, rather than doing what he thinks he can do. Living in a Fool’s Paradise makes him a man to be hated.

*Farah Khan, for making SRK look like a starved Ethiopian kid for her so called opus called OSO. Six pack yuck!

*Cine goers across India for letting Sanjay Leela Bhansali make films even after watching his oh-no for heaven’s sake Devdas.

*Union Minister Dr Anbumani Ramadoss for calling an Indian from Bihar a Bihari.

*Kerala’s so called prominent television channels for telecasting live the death of the state’s most respected person and then doing re-runs of the same.

*The current-day Indian National Congress leadership for letting old fox K Karunakaran declare that he is a Congressman again. Someone wake up fast!

*The Marxist Buddha, for all that happened in Nandigram.

*The television channels, national news providers, for going overboard and celebrating events such as the Delhi school shoot out, the stripping of the Dalit woman and similar tearjerkers. The hatred comes not because they made more TRP out of such events, but due to the fact that they totally forgot the humane angle in such developments.

*The ISRO, for stooping to levels unseen in a bid to stay put in Kerala with its IIST. With such an insult handed over by the state government, wonder why the space agency doesn’t look at neighbouring Tamil Nadu for some quality space for the IIST.

Games children play!

Here I am again, miserably pained by the news brought into my living room by the north-westerly satellite signals. As I sit brooding about the sickening era of political theatrics, where even a great Mohandas is mistaken for some imaginary Gujarati dude called Mohanlal by one of post-independent India’s most powerful political beings, here comes another shocker.

My poor soul is awfully shaken, as kids – little kids – take drama out of some bloody flick to the corridors of their school. Gun wielding kids have arrived in the land of the Mahatma. What more do we need? What more do we look for? India has suddenly turned a developed nation. Development after all has just one bench mark. It all depends on how effectively we ape the Americans.

Kids shooting down school mates are just ordinary stuff for the Americans. We in India have enacted the aping game with perfection. If ever Gurgaon, not very far off the national capital, is remembered by posterity to come, let it be for this.

For the visual media, the games children played in a Gurgaon school somehow came as manna from up above, it seems. Panel discussions, special programmes and a bit of comparison with Big Brother US ruled the airwaves. I agree, this indeed was news, a shocking one at that. But why did even the most respected ones in the elevated telly space look at it as a warning to the parents.

Kids, even when they play with guns, have a great deal of innocence that rules them. Guns, Barbie dolls or the way puny Jerry makes mincemeat of dumb Tom seldom make much of a difference to them, do they? For them everything is a play thing. Here in this case too, they played with the trigger of a loaded firearm.

Instead of telling the kids what to do and what not to, why don’t we tell ourselves that? We, adult humans, happen to be thinking beings, or so they say. Why don’t we tell the parents, who take pride in praising their kids at open fora, to act as examples that can be emulated? Why do we have to watch crime flicks on TV along with the kids and lament later as our wards do the same?

Who is to blame for the Gurgaon episode? If the kids in the US go on a shooting spree in school, is it a must that our kids too should do that here? Why don’t we at least decide not to buy kids even plastic guns when they ask for toys? Why don’t we desist ourselves from sending our kids to schools that take pride in just name building rather than teaching meaningful stuff? Why do we fall for the international tags attached to schools these days?

Gandhi is at least a ‘Munnabhai gone awry’ for today’s kid. The next generation, brought up on a staple diet of bullets, suicide bombers and plane hijacks, are sure to know nothing about a man who lived all his life for non-violence. Ahimsa doesn’t have a meaning in even modern day Gandhian parlance. Why blame the kids?

Instead of discussing what went wrong, it is high time we thought about how not to go wrong. We don’t need a Gandhi to be reborn again to do this. The cops have arrested the kids involved in the Gurgaon school shoot out. Wouldn’t it have been wise to penalize the parents of these kids for corrupting the minds of their wards to such an extent that they sneaked into school with guns hid safe in their socks? The parent is liable to admit being the criminal force here. What say?