kasmenon

  THE TWO DEMOCRACIES WITH ITS UNDERLYING FAULT LINES The American civil society went through a painful but determined effort to bring about a change in the way it treated racial groups, including blacks, post-world war. After the death of Kennedy, President Johnson, introduced measures that tried to address the racial issues. The civil rights movement, of Martin Luther King Jr, reinforced this change. The two American political entities, the Democrats and the Republicans, both had a large segment of liberal members, even though there were still conservatives and white supremacy right wingers lying dormant in both. America seemed to have battled the demon, as if it were, for now, it seemed. The world had another experiment in liberal democracy, conducted far away in India. After centuries of a highly divided society on caste lines and ruled by multitudes of fiefdoms, this geographical entity, called the Indian subcontinent, was plundered and ruled by all and sundry until the ...

An attempted coup by Trump. So finally US behaves like a banana republic. Thugs and Trump bhakts breach security and enter capital hill , house of US parliament, and assult all those there. Force entry towards Congressmen and women and who ran for shelter. Four dead and many injured. A huge security failure. Imagine how easy it would be for terrorists to have got in and kill politicians and officials! An event yhat is deadlier than the Indian parliamemt attack. Here are vital questions you may ponder over and ignore at your peril. How can the US preach other nations now? Will the US blame Russia or China for this also? Or is this not their own doing? Will the US experience be a lesson to other democracies on how such misplaced ideaology can harm democracy and propagate one person's personality and selfish interest? How deep is the divide of people and how did those who manage a personality cult following, acheive this divide. How weak institutions, as in some natio...

  MEMORIES OF DAYS GONE BY AND A TRIBUTE Radheshyam was a middle aged, tall and a bit heavily set man. His face never reflected any stress whatsoever in life. Pleasant and always with a welcome tilt of the head and an occasional bow when he sees his regular customers. All this while his hands magically circumnavigated the head of a customer, deftly trimming and shaping the hair. As always, he had a tale to tell, an incident to narrate and a couple of political points to make. To whoever was in his shop and willing to lend an ear. He was not unduly concerned if anyone participated in this attempted conversation or not but an occasional nod or a smile would suffice to egg him on. The radio, ever present, tuned to Vividh Bharti, relentlessly in the background, rendered those wonderful and evergreen melodies of Rafi, Mukesh, Lata and Kishore. While we went about losing a bit of hair, the memory cells replaced matter lost with the lyrics and tunes of these songs. Forever etched. ...

HAS THE CRICKET MATCH BEEN WON? NOT YET!   The West Indian batsman shuffled across and met the ball slightly outside his offstump , the ball hurtling at about 90 mph, and thumped it past cover. Immaculate and perfectly timed. The cherry hugged mother earth, green as green grass can be, and raced to the fence. The four slips, a gully and the wicket keeper, waiting for that snick, along with the extra cover, just stood and watched. The moment was greeted with silence. Deafening silence. I felt sad. The eleven men, the two batsmen and the two umpires, all in majestic white flannels and green cap, against a green top ground at Southampton, England, was playing cricket in all its majestic glory. Test cricket and not the short variety. The red cherry that defines real cricket. The English speedster, hurtling with nine men breathing down the neck of a young West Indian batsmen , the ball dug in hard and then moving away off the air or off the seam at 92 mph, the young batsmen, nonchalantl...

WILL A US HAPPEN IN INDIA? It just took a spark in the US to get people , lakhs of them, onto the streets protesting. In almost all cities. Imagine one black man killed as compared to a lakh killed due to corona!!  Disproportionate response, is't? Why did this take place ? Why did the people  abandon  all  the corona fears and, without following social distancing norms, mingle freely and then violently protest. Anger spilling over like never before. Surely, the lockdown ,with its accompanying  loss of jobs and businesses , inadequate response by authority etc may have bottled up the anger and frustration. But that alone does not lead to a tinder box  like situation.  Racial tension has existed in the US for ages and  that too cannot , on its own, lead to a flash point. So what could be the underlying  factor that lead to this flash point, of this ignition. Lets look at what had happened  in the US during Trump's regime. Economically...

A HOST AT THE NICK OF TIME The weather was hot as the summer had set in around a well to do suburb of Mumbai. The location was the narrow corridor of an apartment block, in a congested lane. A door of an apartment faced the corridor. Dimly lit by a bulb that had a thick layer of dirt covering its lower hemisphere. An otherwise busy bustling lane where vendors sold Vada pav, Behl and Pani puri. Where children played cricket and the ball managed to dodge Two wheelers and motorcars. Today it was deserted but for few sullen looking men, out on errands or hunting to buy bread and a policeman, who was bored stiff. Coronaji was hovering in front of the door of that apartment, facing the corridor. Anxious but relieved that he had managed to reach here after all the turmoil. Coronaji happened to be born inside a big fat bald and not so gentle a man , somewhere in the UK. A business man trader, he had made his fortune in UK . He was getting ready for his usual visit to his native country, India...

THE GODS ARE ANGRY Brahma trooped in hurriedly, huffing and puffing. He was late, held up. He had to get the approval of a million sub gods to nominate him for this meeting and that took time. He walked over to his seat on the round table and acknowledged everyone with a radiating smile and a nod. Others waved him to his seat. The room was moderate in its decor, minimalist. The walls were painted white. On a table across and on the far side were the books. The bible and Gita with immense wear and tear was followed by the Koran and Granth sahib, etc. Above on the wall were posters, vividly depicting the occasions each faith fought the other, vanquished or lost. The dates and events were described below. Humans like a guy called Picasso, Ravi Verma etc were commissioned to do these. The wall was still half empty. The rest of the room was wide and empty but for the centre table. A large, 50 plus seater, round table made of teak with ornate work and cloth upholstered chairs, was the ...