Pawar slapped.
Only one slap? comments Anna Hazare.

Slapgate is dominating media and Parliament for the last two
days. There are different takes on the episode. BJP is talking with tongue in
cheeks. Anna has publically justified
it. In his opinion one slap is just too little for the injustice towards
farmers who were forced to commit suicide.
I am not in a position to digest this logic coming particularly
from Anna. Does he means to say that people are free to slap the FM for rising
prices or the HM for law and order or the PM for corruption all around. The
reasons seem to be good enough as far as he is considered. The other day he
said that people who drink alcohol should be tied to the tree and beaten. This
way there will be no end and one day each one of us will be slapping each
other.
He seems to have lost his way or he thinks he has remedy for
every ill in our society and his way is the right way. This is what happens we
put people like Anna on high pedestal. All said done he has little or no
knowledge of many complex problems of a huge country like India. India lives in
villages but Anna’s village Ralegaon Sidhi is not India. Those who called Anna
is above Parliament or who compared him with Gandhi should think twice. We have
still not forgotten ‘India is Indira and Indira is India” and the aftermath of
this in imposition of Emergency.

BEAUTY + BRAINS
=OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With due apologies to women in general and brainy and
beautiful female Verdurians in
particular I am posting this RRR. We have hundreds of examples of beautiful
intelligent women in every walk of life be it Politics, Glamour or Profession.
We had beautiful and a very sharp brained woman PM and we currently have a very
beautiful and sharp woman CM down south. We will leave other two women CMs for
obvious reasons. This only strengthened the point that women are also blessed
with brains in addition to beauty.
But here will talk of exceptionally beautiful women who were
blessed with brains also. It is generally believed that beauty and brains do
not go together and when they do it can lead to disaster, not all the time but
generally because once an intelligent women uses her beauty assets to further
her ambitions, anything may happen. We know that blondes considered beautiful
in western world are made fun of their brains. Beauty with brains has been
blamed for all havoc right from the times of Egyptian Queen Cleopatra II who
was accused and rightly for the assassination of her husband Julius Caesar. She also met a
very tragic end but that is history as told. The point is she used her beauty
to gain power.
Kaikai, the beautiful and most favored Queen of King
Dashratha also used her beauty and brains to get the Kingdom for her son
Bharatha. In the process, Rama was exiled and Dashratha died. It is another
issue that Bharatha refused to go her way.
It is common
knowledge that beauty with brains could reach their goals while beauty minus
brains is simply exploited. The peculiar example is that of Aishwarya Rai who
first used Salman Khan to further her career and then Vivek Oberoi to get rid
of Salman Khan and finally landed in Bachchan household as a Bahu by marriage
to junior Bachchan a few years younger to her. Poor beautiful Rekha had no or little brains and was
exploited by Bachchan senior only to land in a failed marriage ending in the suicide of her one/two
month old businessman husband.
Friends you may agree to disagree or give more such examples
of scheming brainy beauties.

COLORS OF LIFE-6. LOVE IS BLIND
This also relates to MDSIC and my final year of Intermediate
commerce. Bade Bhai Saheb, as you all know was my class and roommate. I think I
have told you that though he was two
years senior to me but we were in the same class from 6th class
onwards not because he was anyway less of a good student but because I took the
advantage of skipping 5th
class to be with him in the same school.
Now let me come to the subject. Ravindra and we lived in the
same neighborhood. He was the brother –in law of our Commerce Teacher to whom
his elder sister was married. As always happens a teacher can teach anybody on
earth but when it comes to teaching his ‘saala’, it is an impossible job mainly
because he cannot twist the ears of his wife’s younger brother. So very often
he would send him to our place for help and since he was one year junior to us
we were happy to help because it gave us some sadistic pleasure. He was a below
average student and was pursuing his Intermediate Arts.
Final exams were on and he came to us for advice how best to
secure good marks in Essay writing. We told him there were good chances of
pleasing the examiner if the essay started with some quotation in English by a
great person. We gave him some examples as which quotation could be used for
what subject and so on.
He took our advice for good. Next day he came to our room
and was looking in best of spirits. We asked him how he did in his Essay. He
very joyfully announced that he started essay with a very popular quote. And
what it was, we asked. “Love is blind” was his reply. And whose quote is it, we
asked. “Pandit Nehru”. And what was
subject of the Essay, we asked. “Bharat Me Badhati Jansankhya Ki Samasya”
(Problem of increasing population in India).
We laughed to our hearts’ content. Don’t you think he had
given the best quote?

WHY ARE WE AFRAID OF POLICE?
In Delhi, the Police Department has a Senior Citizens Cell.
Seniors who are living alone can register with them. The beat constable of the
area is expected to visit them routinely and help them in case of need. We are
registered with the Cell. The beat constable visits us at once in a while but
certainly to deliver the Birthday Greeting Cards for both of us. The beat
constables are transferred quite frequently and that is the reason so far in
last two years we have been visited by different constables. They are young,
educated and smartly dressed. Mostly they are in a hurry as they have lot of
other work to do but once in a while they agree to share a cup of tea with us.
While the tea is getting ready in the kitchen by my wife I keep talking to them
about their families and life in general. We are happy when they leave with a
smiling face.
That brings me the topic ‘why we are afraid of police’? It
is said that ‘police kin a dosti achchi na dushmani’ (Neither friendship nor enmity
with a policeman is god). If you are friendly with them they may use you and if
have enmity with them they may harass you on flimsy grounds. We lived with this
saying through our life. Fortunately or so we had no one in the police
department from our family and therefore could not have a fair idea.
One thing was always certain. We were afraid of policemen.
Mostly rightly because we jumped the red lights at traffic points or did not
have driving license or vehicle papers in order or played cards during Diwali
or had booze in the parks or did many such things. We were not afraid of being
legally punished but of the amount we will have to take out from our wallets to
avoid legal punishment. We were afraid of them for no reason also. We always
saw a policeman as an essential evil that harassed innocent people and sided
with the influential people. We saw them as hand in gloves with the thieves or
robbers. We were told they had a share in the loot everywhere. Most of these
policemen were shabbily dressed, pot bellied and foul mouthed. In short they
did not incite confidence.
I think if more and more educated and people came in the
police department and they are trained properly, we may see a sea change in our
life itself. It is not that ail policemen are corrupt or uneducated or did not
come from good families but it is the training and work environment that has
not helped them to be a good citizen and such people were put on the roads to
teach the laws of good citizenry.