Born with a silver bomb in my mouth

Now, Hyderabad: yet another bomb blast. Another set of people sent to heaven under the “Tatkal” scheme of the Holy Jehad. Terrorism was meant to be there for a symbolic purpose. To threaten and bring to knees a government, a religious group or an organization, by a spectacular and sudden display of gore and deathly intent. But the frequency with which these bombings are happening, it won’t be long before people stop caring for these bombings. Terror will become a misnomer in these attacks.
Terror will become so normal that deaths resulting from it would be deemed Natural. The Census organization will just add this to their mortality factor and the terrorists will be left scratching their heads. Imagine terrorists bombing the New Delhi railway station and Manmohan Singh yawning in his message to the nation and announcing a republic day parade appearance for those who miraculously escaped being killed, as compensation. It is indeed going to come to that. People will start having 8-9 children keeping a factor of 40% - 60% to be lost to bombings. Families not losing any of their members to bomb blasts for 10 years in a row, will be accused of sedition and siding with the terrorists, and sentenced to be killed by bombing.
Now, the infrastructure:
Instead of fire hydrants and electric poles, we will have land mines and dynamite sticks installed all over the towns and villages. Airtel and BSNL will install towers all throughout India with Nokia introducing a special button on all its Cell phones to facilitate remote detonations of bombs and mines. A roaming facility will also be introduced, wherein a certain Mr Hakla Memon on a business trip to Dodda in Kashmir would be able to detonate bombs at Malleswaram in Bangalore, paying only nominal extra charges. Incoming Calls: As incoming calls would inadvertently result in death due to explosion of the consumer, they will not be charged.
IIMs would introduce a two year PGDBM (Post Graduate Diploma in Dead Body Management) – Future DB managers will be taught how to best make money by selling, and reusing organs retrieved from the dead bodies. The rest of the remains would be used to make human coats for pet dogs and race horses.
Sotheby’s would auction famous severed heads, which would hang in the living rooms of the top terrorists. Imagine a roaring Bush face with two wooden horns in Osama’s living room!
Famous Supermodels like Naomi Campbell would walk down the ramp, having only one leg, with the other one (lost in a blast) replaced by an exotic false leg made of Paris Hilton’s hand!

The following jobs will remain for people depending on their availability of organs,

Two hands – Beggars/ Body scratchers (for itch-infected people without hands)
One hand missing – Software Engineers cum part-time body scratchers
Both hands missing and head intact – Surgeons
Both hands and head missing – Managers
Dead people/ Ghosts – Politicians

As of now, I am fit only for the Body scratcher job! Anybody with an itch???

Of Paintings and Beatings

The latest thing to grab the country's attention is a row over the roughing up of an arts student by Modi's goons in Gujarat. Usually it doesnt take a justice of the Supreme Court to decide who is right and who is wrong in such matters. But this time it is a little different. Here the kid in question actually deserved a beating. By painting sleazy pictures of godesses and messiahs, he had done the equivalent of pinching an ass's bottom. It came as no surprise that he was kicked in the groin for his trouble. Justice served one might say. Not quite.

The self-proclaimed intellectuals claim that the self-proclaimed moral police have no right to take matters into their own hands. Being a free country, people are allowed to express themselves in any manner they see fit, they say. The ruffians involved in the acts of vandalism were not qualified to judge the pieces of art is another argument that has been put forth.

Modi's goons on the other hand allege that the pictures put on display grossly violated their sensibilities. Also they wonder where the intelligentsia was when there was a similar row over some cartoons that made light of the life of Mohammed the Prophet. Being men of action they desisted from further debate on the matter but assured the public of such interventions in future too if the need arises.

It is difficult to disagree with either partiy. One cannot agree with them either. Freedom of expression is no excuse to hurt another's feelings and you certainly dont need a degree in art to judge a painting. On the other hand violence cannot be justified and simply should not be condoned. Appropriate channels must be used when there is an infringement of one's rights or sensibilities.

So who is to blame? In an ideal situation, the courts or the police should have taken cogniscence of the paintings and dealt with it accordingly. But in a country that takes a decade to pronounce a person guilty of killing another in front of a hundred people, it would be foolhardy to expect any action in issues such as these. The consitution, rights and duties are today nothing but mere words that can be used to justify any action.

But before anything lofty can be achieved, people must be made to understand that laws are laws, not guidelines. Until such a time, it is either the Shariat or the Manusmriti from which the penal code derives from.