FREE-FOR-ALL AT MIDNIGHT

The government of India has got to come up with a honest answer that befits a query into why it cracked down on a peaceful hunger-strike so hard, that too in the middle of the night, that innocent people were 'dealt' with tear-gas, water-cannon, lathicharge and brickbats. An excuse that a minute section of the protestors had tried to stop police personnel by pelting stones doesn't stand at all.

Describing it as a shocking episode is an understatement -- I am too shocked to search for stronger words. If an answer doesn't come up, then the episode on the 5th of June 2011 that created an Indian mid-summer night's nightmare would go down in the historical pages of Infamy as one of the most heinous acts that Independent India has ever seen.

This is certainly not the way to deal with a nonviolent protest no matter how threatening the verbal aggression was perceived on Ramdev's platform of protest. He was certainly not instigating his audience to violence.

According to reports, even at 11:30pm, some negotiations were on, with the government sending the second draft, modified, of the day. And there was an impression too that the hunger-strike would be called at 12 noon today. What happened in the next 2 hrs with an emergency cabinet meeting at the highest level, that the govt decided to act suddenly and in the middle of the night?

The Delhi police's official version is that official permission for a hunger-strike was not sought by Ramdev and co. Does that necessitate a sudden crackdown at midnight so much so that many, including women, children and old people were beaten up and tear-gas was used?

First you give a suspiciously regal VVIP reception with 4 cabinet ministers present at the airport. You negotiate for 2 days meekly, including the first one in a 6-star hotel behind closed doors. And then within two hours of forwarding a modified draft-proposal -- the second of the day, you twist your policy of negotiation right around on its head, put on iron gloves, and crack down on an unarmed peaceful crowd, to negate the hunger-strike of the 'opponent' in issue, no matter who and what his issue is, how impractical his demands were?

It was a very palpable panic reaction of the government, one that the government miserably failed to camouflage. The sudden "will-not-tolerate-nonsense" steely attitude deep at night, (as if the ruling party gained "enlightenment" after all these frustrating decades) just seems to have given its real face away. It is very, very surprising, keeping in mind the presence of a couple of seasoned troubleshooters in the cabinet, it should have much more 'political' and shrewd.

Perhaps, in face of the severe political onslaught that's egged the opposition on, the sustained effort of the central government behind having to explain and defend the series of scams, and simultaneously trying to balance the coalition equation, has caused its think-tank some possible 'mental fatigue'. The government has repeatedly failed as far as political foresight is concerned -- it seems to have become an oversight.

I am least bothered about Ramdevji's political future (now all the more so, the way he messed it up yesterday, by reacting immaturely to Kapil Sibal's distribution of his 'letter' in the evening press conference - that's my perception, it needn't be the truth) -- the one in which he'd declared and put his consenting signature on, that he'll call off his fast on Sunday at 12 noon if the govt conceded certain points. I guess Ramdev hadn't seen it coming -- the govt 'releasing' his declaration in the press, because he had consciously witheld the specifics of the letter, from the crowd in Ramleela Maidan. He changed his pitch and the main 'issue' at that moment, immediately after he was informed about Sibal's 'betrayal'.

Here the issue of Black Money takes centre-stage. Possibly the script was something like: He became agressive in his bid to deal with the 'betrayal' in public (that was certainly a thing he hadn't foreseen) -- the aggression made him make impractical demands, that he won't relent unless the govt responded with drafts in all the issues, a truly unfair demand -- that can't be done within a few days with a gun on its head).
The govt too felt threatened by his new pitch and panicked, because by now the "black money" issue was in danger of exploding right in its face, the more Baba would continue, the stronger(and angrier) the public would be instigated too, and in a short time.

And here we have the result -- both Ramdevji and the govt messed it up big time. Whatever the actual script might have been, one should keep the poorly rehearsed drama far away from contemplation and turn its focus on the after-effect of Big Mess-up. And it gets angry, very angry at the police having been brutal on women, the old people, and definitely the way it took Baba off RamLeela Maidan.

The endless political demonstrations and rallies, the ones really threatening and out-of-control, with goons blatantly conducting the show, the ones which make us more frustrated by the day, continue to take place, causing extreme discomfort to the common man. These are handled with kid-gloves, and shamelessly nonsensical political oneupsmanship. And peaceful, harmless women, children and old men are teargassed and lathicharged.. This is certainly not democratic governance.

I might not conform to Ramdevji's takes as far polity is concerned, neither do I agree with the way he thinks to execute his plans, and this personal disagreement with the intentions and policies of Ramdevji might go to the point of extremely cynical dislike.
But I will NOT agree to him being pushed back to his proper place, at the cost of disrespecting the institution of Indian democracy that empower the citizen with basic human rights. It's our duty to condemn any action that is undemocratic and goes against the sanctity of Humanism.

Nothing can justify it. And we won't take any justification. WE SHOULD PROTEST. LET'S HEAR EACH OTHER'S VOICES.

Jai Hind.

Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
------------------------------------------------------
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology&Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
------------------------------------------------------
"It is important to just listen for a while instead of speaking." -- My teacher
------------------------------------------------------

PANIC REACTION SHOCKING

Unless the Indian government comes with a fitting answer to why it cracked down on a peaceful hunger-strike so hard, that too in the middle of the night, that innocent people
was dealt with tear-gas, lathicharge and brickbats (even if a minute section of the people tried to stop police personnel with stone-pelting), yesterday's shocking episode would be one of the most heinous acts in the history of Independent India..

This is certainly not the way to deal with a nonviolent protest no matter how threatening the verbal aggression was perceived from Ramdev's platform. He was certainly not instigating his audience to violence.

According to reports, even at 11:30pm, some negotiations were on, with the government sending the second draft, modified, of the day. And there was an impression too that the hunger-strike would be called at 12 noon today.
What happened in the next 2 hrs with an emergency cabinet meeting at the highest level, that the govt decided to act suddenly and in the middle of the night? The Delhi police's official version is that official permission for a hunger-strike was not sought by Ramdev and co. Does that necessitate a sudden crackdown at midnight so much so that many, including women and old people were physically beaten up, and tear-gas was used?

First you give a suspiciously regal VVIP reception with 4 cabinet ministers present at the airport. You negotiate for 2 days meekly, including the first one in a 6-star hotel behind closed doors. And then within two hours of forwarding a modified draft-proposal -- the second of the day, you twist your policy of negotiation right around on its head, put on iron gloves, and crack down on an unarmed peaceful crowd, to negate the hunger-strike of the 'opponent' in issue, no matter who and what his issue is, how impractical his demands were?

This is certainly not democratic governance.
It should explain its action to the entire country, and that has to accommodate a very strong reason to justify the way it decimated the opponent.

The endless political demonstrations and rallies, the ones really threatening and out-of-control, with goons blatantly conducting the show, the ones which make us more frustrated by the day, continue to take place, causing extreme discomfort to the common man. These are countered with kid-gloves, and shamelessly nonsensical political oneupsmanship. And peaceful, harmless women and old men are teargassed and lathicharged..

Fiercely condemnable and every citizen should protest actively.

Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
------------------------------------------------------
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology&Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
------------------------------------------------------
"It is important to just listen for a while instead of speaking." -- My teacher
------------------------------------------------------

HOLY LINGUISTIC!

I Just saw on TV (@ 7:45pm, 3rd June, 2011)-- His Holiness Shri Shri Ramdev Baba claimed that the central government has agreed to teaching medicine and engineering in regional languages.
So

1) there are 24 languages and 576 dialects, at least.

2)is ka matlab hain ki all text-books (desi & videsi) are to be translated in least in 8-10 languages if not 24.
Question is not when(if one thinks about the necessary infrastructure) but the sahi disha.
3) toh agar, 5 yrs down the line a 3rd year Tamil undergraduate med student shall want to exchange ideas with a Gujarati counterpart, we will need 2 translators - Tamil & Gujrati. Or dono ko Gujarati or Tamil me expert (tell me the Hindi word for 'expert' -- I am ashamed for my ignorance).

4) the cliché argument is all countries (the maximum brunt is borne by European & South American countries) speak, and work in their own national languages. I wonder how many countries have got at least 5 other registered regional languages in addition to the national one.

5)Main yeh janna chahunga ki if a Mizo doctor is discussing medicine with a Spanish (Basque or Catalan) in a medical conference in Tokyo attended by 50 Japanese doctors, how things shall proceed even with the help of electronic translator. I want to know.

6) if a research is being conducted by a team of 5 doctors, Punjabi, Marathi, Bihari, Telegu and Assamese, what shall be the language for constant interaction. And that of the research papers. So there shall be 5 languages to translate the papers, to be read by at least 5 eager doctors -- Gujarati, Malayali, Bengali, Oriya, Mizo.

APART from these expected replies : that
* His Holiness has been misquoted by the media or me, or
* been perceived in the wrong context, or
* me having commented prematurely before having gone through the entire speech, or
* me being an obsessed pathological liar,

Please enlighten me. I am absolutely ignorant.

There are at least 27 relevant questions that are in my mind. I don't want to overshoot my mouth off, apart from the natural curiosity about such prospect in Law & other subjects

With respect to all,
Jai Hind.
Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
------------------------------------------------------
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology&Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
------------------------------------------------------
"It is important to just listen for a while instead of speaking." -- My teacher
------------------------------------------------------

JAN LOKPAL BILL : OUR HOLY FATHERS AND PATERNAL AFFLICTION

A few weeks back, we saw and were ourselves part of a massive social movement against corruption at any level of governance or bureaucracy, not to mention in our own lives too. Anna Hazare led from the front. One of the factors which made the movement such a big uprising was the absence of politics. We even saw a couple of politicians being booed away by shouting protesters when they tried to jump in, in a brazen and audacious strength never seen before, protesting voices that seemed to come from you and me.

There was nothing calculated about it. Anna didn't know how many people would protest and how. It was the Spontaneity that surprised our own selves, and put the government on a backfoot. The Satyagraha was called off when the government gave in.
I don't think we rooted for Baba Ramdev when we fasted, or he was part of the 'package' that the mass protest rooting for a corruption-free India, took inspiration.
I tell you -- the mass will not be there this time, whoever is fasting wherever.

Whatever Ramdevji did was premature, and it allowed the Home Minister (who is in the Lokpal Bill panel) to assert : "..the members of the Civil Society are divided in opinion." He didn't mean the 5 who are in the panel. He meant Ramdev's demands. This gentleman should keep himself to the job he thinks he does well. Why is he being allowed to enter the issue in the way that the country observes? He might be having millions of 'fans' in heaven and on earth, he is most welcome to support the cause, but since when has he taken up the 'mantle' of being one of the voices of the Cause. On that note,which I hope will not offend one for that is not my intention, I must say I wouldn't like a Yoga exponent representing my voice against corruption, who wishes to cure the "disease of homosexuality with herbal medicine."

Ordinary apolitical people like me are perceiving an atmosphere of a Tamasha that's gaining momentum, and this is Very Very Disappointing. And we are feeling devastated, and utterly frustrated, and now I understand why the country continues to be in the state of utter mess despite having patriotic citizens. The planned Tamasha is Ram Leela Maidan later this week is likely to see more 'mass support' by 'paid' followers of the Divine Cause, shouting and sloganeering, and that will portray a very, very distorted face of India, the face we have continued ignore due to personal prejudices --- the very contradiction that lies unfettered in India's consciousness. If we do not act now, nobody will ever act in future, nor mentioning the painful heartbreak of 1.2 million Indians.

Every action has a time. (If one prepones or postpones it, the entire action is nullified in effect. Exactly what the government seemed to be trying to do by throwing the rule-book back, that disappointed members of Civil Society 3 days back). As a commoner I will not like to dissect the constitutional and technical aspects of the consensus that was reached then. Not that I can't. But the son of a farmer who took his own life in Vidarbha last year out of hunger and heartbreak wouldn't. He wouldn't care, not at this stage.

I have got no issues at all with anybody coming up with any form of non-violent protest, against any institution if the agenda is pro-people and pro-India, no matter who might be uncomfortable with that. But a false perception is defusing out to India. Please let him not interfere with the Specific Process that is on roll at the moment regarding interactions in the Lokpal Bill panel. It is giving the government, or that part of it with vested interests, chances to sabotage the process, the specific process of what should be included in the draft. It is diluting the effect that the mass movement had brought about, no matter how patriotic somebody's intention might be. And that is where it is getting prematurely politicised (we can't avoid that in the future, but in the Right stage). And This is where Anna Hazare scored -- no ambiguities in his words, and his staunch resistance to let in any sort of political gamesmanship that might threaten to divert the focus off the real issue. He represented Balance, as a Responsible leader.

Today it is 'black money'. Tomorrow it shall be 'female infanticide'. Day after tomorrow, it would be 'BPO and Rs.20/- a day'. Everything is valid and correct. But it has to be organised and focus as perfectly as possible. We need Responsibility now, not unharnessed emotion (it would have been relevant if we were trying to make a mass movement, like the one 6 weeks before. And it is Our responsibility to do that and share. We owe it to the dead farmer's son.

The only point I shall continue to comment on with utmost humility, no matter what, is the issue of the Jan Lokpal Bill which is yet to be drafted conclusively and to be passed in Parliament. A specific momentum has gathered, and it's our duty to thwart any factor -- animate or inanimate, irrespective of caste, gender, religion, financial condition, rural or urban origins, that can decelerate the process. Let's keep our focus on that. And it points exactly to one of the reasons why Ramdevji should tread carefully as far as the Lokpal Bill is concerned.

The issue of the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court related to the Jan Lokpal Bill has continued to confuse the mind of the common Indian. Everybody associated with the Jan Lokpal Bill seems to be giving touch-in-cheek monosyllabic answer, and the fumbling phonetic intrinsics are adding to the confusion. Who is this holy Father to opine on whether the PMO and the judiciary should be kept out of the proposed ambit?

I have no doubt about the truth of a report because I myself watched Ramdevji say that he is against the idea of the issue of the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court coming under the ambit of the Jan Lokpal Bill. I watched him saying these very words on a TV news channel on 31st.May, at a convention in Madhya Pradesh (related to his Swabhiman Yatra, I guess). I felt all the more sad as I watched him on the same news channel yesterday evening, saying that his words have been 'misqouted' or have been 'perceived in the wrong context' by the media, when he was asked by Arnab Goswami to clarify his take on the issue of the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court coming under the umbrella of the Jan Lokpal Bill. I still fail to comprehend what he actually meant. The Indian commoner has become tired of such ambiguities -- one of the reasons why we all have developed a wholesome apathy to political exercises, no matter what and where, and lack political consciousness.

The Indian common man has become tired to the point of disgust and ironic amusement, having been at the receiving end of the infamously comical "misquoted or wrongly contextualised" for years, as and when eminent people have rushed to utter these words at the drop of a hat, whenever caught on the wrong foot. And this is where and how Mistrust creeps in the equation, and we, ourselves, let vested interests capitalize on such avoidable cracks in the solidarity of India's collective consciousness.

In times of confusion and impatient unrest like now, (I guess it's natural when a unique democracy like India stands on the threshold of a controlled implosion and changes long overdue, some being radical), I find the 'silence' on our part deafening and scary too. And unless we do not listen to each other and know each other, we would be guilty of not being compatriots, despite being responsible citizens of the same country.

It's our voices that matter. At least the Great Indian Silence (a deafening one, which seems to have been passed down generations since India turned Republic in 1950) seems to have been broken, and I hope the trend shall continue to flourish. I am not picking out individual perceptions. But it is my responsibility to speak out if I see a conflict of interest as far as the Lokpal Bill drafting and its validation in Parliament. (I hope our common focus remains there still). On that note,which I hope will not offend one for that is not my intention, I must say I wouldn't like a Yoga exponent representing my voice against corruption, who wishes to cure the "disease of homosexuality with herbal medicine."

We cannot do without debates as long as the focus is unanimously identified, and we consciously refrain from confronting each other with *individual perceptions about each other*, thus edging out the core issue and distorting the order of our *common priorities. Active debates with full freedom of expression shall enable us to understand each other, criticize each other, and learn from each other -- something needed so direly, if we decide to protest and fight shoulder to shoulder. That is one democratic way without distorting propriety, by which every dark corner of India, ignored before, can be enlightened, enlightening our own selves too.
India cannot agree if Indians do not agree to disagree.
Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
------------------------------------------------------
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology&Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
------------------------------------------------------
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been
there before me (Sigmund Freud)
------------------------------------------------------

JAN LOKPAL BILL : OUR HOLY FATHERS AND PATERNAL AFFLICTION

A few weeks back, we saw and were ourselves part of a massive social movement against corruption at any level of governance or bureaucracy, not to mention in our own lives too. Anna Hazare led from the front. One of the factors which made the movement such a big uprising was the absence of politics. We even saw a couple of politicians being booed away by shouting protesters when they tried to jump in, in a brazen and audacious strength never seen before, protesting voices that seemed to come from you and me.

There was nothing calculated about it. Anna didn't know how many people would protest and how. It was the Spontaneity that surprised our own selves, and put the government on a backfoot. The Satyagraha was called off when the government gave in.
I don't think we rooted for Baba Ramdev when we fasted, or he was part of the 'package' that the mass protest rooting for a corruption-free India, took inspiration.
I tell you -- the mass will not be there this time, whoever is fasting wherever.

Whatever Ramdevji did was premature, and it allowed the Home Minister (who is in the Lokpal Bill panel) to assert : "..the members of the Civil Society are divided in opinion." He didn't mean the 5 who are in the panel. He meant Ramdev's demands. This gentleman should keep himself to the job he thinks he does well. Why is he being allowed to enter the issue in the way that the country observes? He might be having millions of 'fans' in heaven and on earth, he is most welcome to support the cause, but since when has he taken up the 'mantle' of being one of the voices of the Cause. On that note,which I hope will not offend one for that is not my intention, I must say I wouldn't like a Yoga exponent representing my voice against corruption, who wishes to cure the "disease of homosexuality with herbal medicine."

Ordinary apolitical people like me are perceiving an atmosphere of a Tamasha that's gaining momentum, and this is Very Very Disappointing. And we are feeling devastated, and utterly frustrated, and now I understand why the country continues to be in the state of utter mess despite having patriotic citizens. The planned Tamasha is Ram Leela Maidan later this week is likely to see more 'mass support' by 'paid' followers of the Divine Cause, shouting and sloganeering, and that will portray a very, very distorted face of India, the face we have continued ignore due to personal prejudices --- the very contradiction that lies unfettered in India's consciousness. If we do not act now, nobody will ever act in future, nor mentioning the painful heartbreak of 1.2 million Indians.

Every action has a time. (If one prepones or postpones it, the entire action is nullified in effect. Exactly what the government seemed to be trying to do by throwing the rule-book back, that disappointed members of Civil Society 3 days back). As a commoner I will not like to dissect the constitutional and technical aspects of the consensus that was reached then. Not that I can't. But the son of a farmer who took his own life in Vidarbha last year out of hunger and heartbreak wouldn't. He wouldn't care, not at this stage.

I have got no issues at all with anybody coming up with any form of non-violent protest, against any institution if the agenda is pro-people and pro-India, no matter who might be uncomfortable with that. But a false perception is defusing out to India. Please let him not interfere with the Specific Process that is on roll at the moment regarding interactions in the Lokpal Bill panel. It is giving the government, or that part of it with vested interests, chances to sabotage the process, the specific process of what should be included in the draft. It is diluting the effect that the mass movement had brought about, no matter how patriotic somebody's intention might be. And that is where it is getting prematurely politicised (we can't avoid that in the future, but in the Right stage). And This is where Anna Hazare scored -- no ambiguities in his words, and his staunch resistance to let in any sort of political gamesmanship that might threaten to divert the focus off the real issue. He represented Balance, as a Responsible leader.

Today it is 'black money'. Tomorrow it shall be 'female infanticide'. Day after tomorrow, it would be 'BPO and Rs.20/- a day'. Everything is valid and correct. But it has to be organised and focus as perfectly as possible. We need Responsibility now, not unharnessed emotion (it would have been relevant if we were trying to make a mass movement, like the one 6 weeks before. And it is Our responsibility to do that and share. We owe it to the dead farmer's son.

The only point I shall continue to comment on with utmost humility, no matter what, is the issue of the Jan Lokpal Bill which is yet to be drafted conclusively and to be passed in Parliament. A specific momentum has gathered, and it's our duty to thwart any factor -- animate or inanimate, irrespective of caste, gender, religion, financial condition, rural or urban origins, that can decelerate the process. Let's keep our focus on that. And it points exactly to one of the reasons why Ramdevji should tread carefully as far as the Lokpal Bill is concerned.

The issue of the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court related to the Jan Lokpal Bill has continued to confuse the mind of the common Indian. Everybody associated with the Jan Lokpal Bill seems to be giving touch-in-cheek monosyllabic answer, and the fumbling phonetic intrinsics are adding to the confusion. Who is this holy Father to opine on whether the PMO and the judiciary should be kept out of the proposed ambit?

I have no doubt about the truth of a report because I myself watched Ramdevji say that he is against the idea of the issue of the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court coming under the ambit of the Jan Lokpal Bill. I watched him saying these very words on a TV news channel on 31st.May, at a convention in Madhya Pradesh (related to his Swabhiman Yatra, I guess). I felt all the more sad as I watched him on the same news channel yesterday evening, saying that his words have been 'misqouted' or have been 'perceived in the wrong context' by the media, when he was asked by Arnab Goswami to clarify his take on the issue of the Prime Minister's Office and the Supreme Court coming under the umbrella of the Jan Lokpal Bill. I still fail to comprehend what he actually meant. The Indian commoner has become tired of such ambiguities -- one of the reasons why we all have developed a wholesome apathy to political exercises, no matter what and where, and lack political consciousness.

The Indian common man has become tired to the point of disgust and ironic amusement, having been at the receiving end of the infamously comical "misquoted or wrongly contextualised" for years, as and when eminent people have rushed to utter these words at the drop of a hat, whenever caught on the wrong foot. And this is where and how Mistrust creeps in the equation, and we, ourselves, let vested interests capitalize on such avoidable cracks in the solidarity of India's collective consciousness.

In times of confusion and impatient unrest like now, (I guess it's natural when a unique democracy like India stands on the threshold of a controlled implosion and changes long overdue, some being radical), I find the 'silence' on our part deafening and scary too. And unless we do not listen to each other and know each other, we would be guilty of not being compatriots, despite being responsible citizens of the same country.

It's our voices that matter. At least the Great Indian Silence (a deafening one, which seems to have been passed down generations since India turned Republic in 1950) seems to have been broken, and I hope the trend shall continue to flourish. I am not picking out individual perceptions. But it is my responsibility to speak out if I see a conflict of interest as far as the Lokpal Bill drafting and its validation in Parliament. (I hope our common focus remains there still). On that note,which I hope will not offend one for that is not my intention, I must say I wouldn't like a Yoga exponent representing my voice against corruption, who wishes to cure the "disease of homosexuality with herbal medicine."

We cannot do without debates as long as the focus is unanimously identified, and we consciously refrain from confronting each other with *individual perceptions about each other*, thus edging out the core issue and distorting the order of our *common priorities. Active debates with full freedom of expression shall enable us to understand each other, criticize each other, and learn from each other -- something needed so direly, if we decide to protest and fight shoulder to shoulder. That is one democratic way without distorting propriety, by which every dark corner of India, ignored before, can be enlightened, enlightening our own selves too.
India cannot agree if Indians do not agree to disagree.

Sent from my BlackBerry®Smartphone
------------------------------------------------------
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology&Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
------------------------------------------------------
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been
there before me (Sigmund Freud)
------------------------------------------------------

Realizations & Reality

When we look around us to see and understand, we actually try to understand what has been called Reality by our forefathers, one that flows along the stream of Time.

Understanding this Reality helps us know how we have evolved. We learn and realize that evolving into more advanced forms increases the specificity of their attributes, and make them more different and independent of each other, despite cohabiting the same bracket that encloses the primitive, unevolved form. In effect these brackets contain anthropological singularities with fewer complexities. Studying these 'singularities' helps us retrace the path along Time through prehistory, back to our origin.

We also believe that this evolution has been progressing faster and faster over time though nobody till now has figured out a strong Reason behind it. This is actually the most dominant perception amongst us. Greater possibilities of evolving into more varieties bring more and more people into its fold of belief --  that the Pace of our evolution has an element of Acceleration. Studying History of Mankind, and trying to correlate and connect the dots in where History has tended to be vague, keeping in mind the parallel movements of anthropological and archaeological revelations give us this information - the 'effective degree' of evolution that has taken place over a given span of time, say 70,000 years back had taken a far more wider span of time to occur  amongst us, or rather when a lesser evolved species (which we can claim to be our "forefathers"), walked upon our planet say two million years ago. In a way, what it tells us is that the more primitive we are, the greater variability of perceptions we possess. The spectrum that is available for us to study across its height and depth is much more wider. That leaves us with more freedom to ponder upon, more choices, more perspectives, and thus more 'depth of knowledge' for us to acquire. I would like to dampen this 'reassuring or lucrative' perception that most people develop in a bid to completely understand origin of species, because man, by nature, wants to learn, to seek for answers that provide more insights into our 'origin'.

We tend to define our reality by the words that we use, both with the spoken word, as well as the words we never say. Yet reality can only be seen in the absence of thought and belief when it comes to understanding our own selves. The reality of the other person lies not in what he reveals but in what he cannot reveal. Therefore to understand man, we should listen not to what he says but rather to what he does not say.
There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing -- man is not the voice of his mind. Man is what he hears from his surroundings. When his intention changes the way to understand things, the things that his intention wants to understand change too. This is the actualization of  transformation. Of Change. 
Inherent in every Intention and Desire is the mechanics for its Fulfillment. Intention and Desire in the field of pure potentiality have infinite organizing power. And when we introduce an intention in the fertile ground of pure potentiality, we put this infinite organizing power to work for us. Everybody has a talent. What is rare is the courage to nurture it in solitude and to follow the talent to the dark places it leads to. 

Each of us comes into this world with a specific destiny -- we have something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. No one is here accidentally -- we all are here meaningfully. There is a Purpose behind us all. The Whole intends to do something through us.

When a child is born, he is completely free from preformed perceptions, having still not been affected by the "conditioning" through which the human mind lets itself get influenced by as it moves on with time..

Soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Simple free being becomes encrusted with the burdensome armor of the ego. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. Some of us, with sensitive seeking minds, "realize" this fallacy  somewhere ahead in life, learning through events and experiences. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, we become seekers.

There comes a time when the pain of continuing exceeds the pain of stopping. At that moment, a threshold is crossed. What seemed unthinkable becomes thinkable. Slowly, the realization emerges that the choice to continue what one has been doing is the choice to live in discomfort, and the choice to stop what he has been doing is the choice to breathe deeply and freely again. Once that realization has emerged, one can either honour it or ignore it, but he cannot forget it.

The Truth I have realized after consciously unlearning a few basic concepts of life is : What has become known can not become unknown again.
---- Sent from my BlackBerry®
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology&Critical Care)
Mumbai, India

Everywhere I go I find that a poet has been
there before me.(Sigmund Freud)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Left out of Power - Bengal Elections 2011

In view of the recent defeat Mamta Banerjee handed out to the Left Front, ousting them out of power contemptuously, supporters - both in the Trinamool Party and in the electorate - might be taking pride in the huge margin by which the Left got defeated, and as a matter of fact, it shall be unusual if that doesn't happen and one can't blame them for that. Yet the fact that there's no significant opposition in a Legislative Assembly can be potentially harmful for any government, enough to keep one in discomfort.

For any system to function properly, an optimal balance is needed -- a 'good' opposition (essentially a counter-debating process) in case of a governing system. Though it depends on the 'quality' of opposition, numbers matter in most states in India as the 'quality' factor has gone for a toss years back.

Now the Left Front is grappling while trying to form a proper opposition in the 2011 Assembly (leave alone the fact that there is not a suitable man to be the Leader of the Opposition). While it shouldn't have such a 'threat' if the exercises in the Assembly are done in copy-book style (what I mean is more or less a spirit in which intelligent debates are conducted) including acknowledgment of the mutual respect between the 2 sides(inspite of win/lose in the political front)that should be there, the uncivilized way in which govt & opposition go at each other with hammer & tongs (not unique in India of course) negate such fancy -- one of the reasons why 'political culture', has assumed such a dirty, negatively fallacious impression in the common citizen's mind and why (few)good politicians of intent are sadly dismissed away by sweeping commentaries people/institutions are given the chance to make.

The New CM, having coming to power the hard way, has to be watchful of the 'corrupt power', power empowers the corrupt with. A very fine and subtle balance - yet one is hopeful that both politicians and we, the electorate have learnt the lesson, for our own good.
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Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri,
Consultant Physician,Mumbai, India.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has
been there before me..(Sigmund Freud)
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MAIL FROM OBLIVION

Sharing with you thoughts caught in the morning wind, blowing in from a horizon, blurred and long forgotten, to oblivion. It doesn't matter from whom, because I feel the presence of somebody without a face, with no name. And the faceless and the nameless never mattered...
The morning, whose shine and glory got blown into a thousand moments that shall never pass, by the morbid despair I feel in the wind, tells me that this faceless voice without a name could be somebody from us.. or maybe not.. maybe one who used to be, but isn't any more.

Draw your own conclusion, if at all..
-- -- --- ---- ---- ---- --- -- -- -- --- ---- ---- ---- --- --
-- -- --- ---- ---- ---- --- -- -- -- --- ---- ---- ---- --- --
To
............,
............


Utterly Disillusioned... I don't see Hope anywhere ahead. Our collective consciousness as Indians has been plagued, the malady of Corruption having eaten its way deep into our bones, so shamelessly deep that our scrupules, our ideas and beliefs around the Right or the Wrong have become essentially non-existent.

It is the corrupted mind of us, the Indian middle-class, that has conveniently allowed this to happen without any reaction. We have become so used to short-cuts and the short term pleasures for which we have bartered away our self-respect, that we have forgotten how to react. And thus we continue to exist as pathetic empty souls devoid of any substance that one can take pride in. We are non-entities which do not demand answers from within us any more, in times when we find ourselves in confrontation with moments of bitter truth.

So we, existentially bankrupt, just keep on running from our own conscience that we smother to silence every day without any guilt, and that which returns to haunt us again and again. And one can see a writing on the wall becoming clearer by the minute : everything we cheated ourselves of, shall return to haunt us..

--------- XYZ
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Sent from my BlackBerry® 
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology & Critical Care)
Mumbai, India.
@ drchodri@yahoo.co.in
@ dranirbanchaudhuri@gmail.com
@ philodoc_2@hotmail.com
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has
been there before me..(Sigmund Freud)
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HARK YE INDIANS

The Great Indian Corruption has not decelerated one bit in its path of rampage. even after we thought that following the social stir three weeks back that there would be a "time-off" however short that may be. Well we got it all wrong. Scams and shameful acts continue to occupy the front pagers.

Anyway you and me haven't been bothered at all (as usual, have we? -Cheers to that) while enjoying the national primetime show at home as UP police 'investigates' the case of national athlete Arunima with the premeditation (brilliant detective work indeed) that the athlete had most probably attempted a suicide.. Indeed. How could I think that there were robbers/chain snatchers on that train? After all it is UP - Mayavati in charge - keeping Dr.Ambedkar's torch alight and shining.

Another "currently running to packed houses" show originates from Haryana, and the very place our MaLe pugilists hail from - Vijender, Akhil : Didn't we worship them when they won medals? Of course we did! We are proud of Bhiwani! So what if two ladies, rephrased - "fallen females" were beaten to death by 6 MEN, as the great town watched silently, I repeat - silently. And Haryana's chief minister has been prompt to assert himself with Haryanvi Masculine Strength, and "quote" : No law and order problems in 'my' state. Point taken. Of course, the men were practising 'punches' (for almost 70 minutes - that's a mind-blowing 23 rounds in the arena) on two expenable and disposable sand-bags, Sorry body-bags -- doesn't matter, does it, my friend? Of course not..as long as the punches were finding their target.. And thus spake the Haryanvi CM : All is well! Of course, we loved the song, you and me, didn't we?And the movie too. The way you and me have been sitting at home, over the last 3 weeks, patting our butts and screaming these three lines in sequence..

To come to think of it, we were shouting down corrupt politicans and bureaucrats to oblivion, or hell.. Whatever. Tell me one thing my friend//my moralistic, courageous Indian brother/sister- have you seen, do you know, or have you tried to know (in case you are in the UK or USA) that there is another Tamasha going on in your country (oh of course you can call it 'our country'!):

The MPs slugfest in the proceedings of the PAC which's supposed to tag and nail the 'irresponsible', (was that too strong a word?)people questioning their accountability over the Rs.70,000 crores India lost in its 2G spectrum allocation. I haven't moved the skin covering my Holy Indian Gluteus Maximus an inch,
because my skin is 6 inches thin (the thinness is decreasing by the day) ... Just wanted to know the number of inches in your case -- no not the thinness, the distance you have moved 'yours' (I was just looking for an voice in agreement)

They(politicos) are also throwing muck at each other in debates over the latest release "Peter Davy Arms Drop": when the issue is how much our intelligence agencies and our Politicians had been compromising our national security with our belief in them. Down with them!
It's good that no spontaneous voice of protest has been heard recently. Now of course yes, we are all Indians, and I don't know about you but I don't stand up, or even put my hand up because I am proud of my Self-Respect and no way, shall let it get dirty just because some acts of lumpenism are taking place in a god-forsaken somewhere, an alibi that reflects my Dignity. (what's yours mate? Just between us..)

And why should we? Anna Hazare is there to take the dirt. And of course we shall claim our stakes in the spoils of victory... Our utter inertness, and richly traditional, and proudly hereditary Apathy has given so much motivation to the frail septuagenarian who conveniently does the dirty job for us. We should be -- (we are the descendants of those who contemplated on sequencing 'Shrutis' 5,500 years back), we know them by the word and thoroughly so. And we've been applying our Wisdom practically -- we should be as Detached as possible, from what actually is an illusion -- [well except for the spoils of victory that might be gained for us by the same frail septuagenarian who conveniently does the dirty job for us)

Have you written a letter? Have you uttered one word in protest? Are you illiterate? I know what you are going to shoot off what remains conveniently shut when it matters : "one can't do it alone".. I guess Anna Hazare is the Indian version of the Hamlin piper, that when he took the first step, everything followed. Why bother about others' tapping toes? Are You a paraplegic? Or a vegetable?
Of course you have got jobs to do.. You are all physicians, MBAs, Teachers, IT professionals...(I can see the Indian halo around your head). Or you are still expecting the 72 year. old to speak on your behalf ?

What are you, yourself? You point fingers towards politicos.. Stand in front of a mirror and point the finger at what is looking back at you. Maybe something will happen (if you are not an narcissist that is, frozen in front of that mirror, lost in your proudly burning eyes.)
I know you will get this mail out of your head the moment you finish it reading it. You are not Capable of doing Anything otherwise..You are the Great Indian Sample of Shamelessness.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Sent from my BlackBerry® 
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (special interest in
Cardiology & Critical Care)
Mumbai, India.
@ drchodri@yahoo.co.in
@ dranirbanchaudhuri@gmail.com
@ philodoc_2@hotmail.com
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Everywhere I go I find that a poet has
been there before me..(Sigmund Freud)
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AMAR SINGH HAS LOST IT?

18/04/20011 - 1845 hrs.

Amar Singh is holding a press conference right now , it is being telecast live all over India right now.

Could any body please explain to Indian citizens about why are we listening to this utter unadulterated crap? I think someone, minister, politician, government , opposition, social activist, editors who care ONE bit about India's people, owe this one to us before we really go berserk out of frustration.
These people, these circumstances , these gimmicks, lies, ultimately drive the Indian common man to reactionary emotions. It is Good not to have M K Gandhi around -- he would committed suicide any way..

Unfortunate. Very unfortunate. Our country doesn't seem to have much of a future. Darkness all the way.
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

THE BEST MEDICINE

I have been suffering from this neuropathy affecting my left hand over the last 6 months. Clinically one would brand the nerve disorder as Left Ulnar Mononeuropathy - the ulnar nerve is one of the 2 main nerves supplying the arm and hand - in my case it is the left one and it is my left hand that has been affected. I've been experiencing an ever-increasing pain, to the point of being excruciating,and an almost constant, weirdly tingling sensation in my left hand, particularly in the ring and little fingers and the area of the palm below them which do not exactly move the way I wish them to.

The condition seems to have developed, according to my neurologist,due to extensive playing of guitar, an exercise I had indulged in with passion, in my late teens and early-20s, when I used to play in the college rock-band which had a rather brief yet excitingly joyous professional stint later on. I had formally learnt classical and folk guitar (like flamenco,the Catalan folk) which is played finger-style, and that requires a 'classical' acoustic guitar which traditionally sports a much broader finger-board than usual. That necessitated my left fingers to stretch extensively, and all the more so when I used to hold the broken chords in the background when we played those Scorpions numbers(I still remember those initially painful hours during rehearsals as we played songs like "When The Smoke Is Going Down").

Over the last few months the left ring and little fingers had forced my hand into a clawed shape of submission, the fingers getting contracted and flexed at the little bone joints, a seemingly eternal state of Spasm that was not exactly painless. I find that rather ironic as the name of my rock-band (well it was 'mine' just as it was any other co-member's) was SPASM too, a name I'd kept myself along with Miku, the bass-guitarist who went on to become a hand-surgeon himself later on. Now that's one of 'those quirks' of destiny, isn't it?

Coming back to my neuropathy, the pain had, at one point of time, increased so much that even the strongest painkillers were not being effective, and I had become literally sick of pain-killing injections. Nothing seemed to work, and the fact that I could no more hold chords, or even use my left fingers while playing guitar(ultimately I had to quit my favourite pass-time activity)only added to my frustrated,depressing woes.

Three weeks back,as I was having my morning cold coffee, my 21 month-old daughter tiptoed her way into the hall, nimble-footed, and stood in front of me,looking at me with her sparkling, bright eyes. I knew that look. She wanted to climb up and sit on my stomach, straddling her legs on the sides facing her father - her favourite "seat" in the morning, as she would excitedly tell me how the pigeons had looked at her from outside the kitchen window or how busily the crows had pecked at the crumbs on the parapet. That day I found it difficult to give her a hand to take her morning seat. The pain was too much in my left hand which found itself too weak to carry her weight. I knew she would be disappointed.

As I looked back at her eyes with helpless apology written all over my face and with a tinge of guilt too,trying to shake my afflicted hand off the pain, I spoke to her in my Bengali mother-tongue,telling her,"Aaj baba'r haate khub byatha je.."(which vaguely translates into - "But there is too much pain in father's hands today...".
She isn't too familiar with that language as her father has got only a handful of relatives and none in Mumbai to pay the occasional visit so that the language is spoken. I really don't know what she understood, but she didn't show any disappointment. What she showed in her eyes was gentle and tender care. She took my hand in her soft, little fingers kissing it mildly, looked up at me and said in broken English,"Baba?pain no...Baba?pain no no.."..

Well,my left hand hasn't exactly stopped paining since, but that was the last time I felt the pain. I have not needed any pain-killers since then simply because I don't feel any pain anywhere, anymore. And as I watch my daughter growing up each day, every hour, every minute, I just wonder how beautiful life can be for anybody in the simplest of ways, in spite of all the pains and troubles,the aches and breaks it keeps on dishing out on a regular basis. No matter how much one cries, life always gets back to you as a great leveller, giving you something to smile about, and perhaps with a little reward at the end. It is just only a matter of time.

Let it be..
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-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
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"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

TOLERANCE A VIRTUE?

[[ thoughts penned down in a moment of frustrated anger few months back, when there was this meeting of seditionists in Delhi.. Still relevant after all these months..]]
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 India seems hell-bent on propagating Tolerance on an unprecedented, to such an extent that the average Indian common man shall perhaps think and act in the most reactionary of ways.
Of course India stands as an example of true democracy and the way an Indian enjoys his fundamental rights and individual freedom, as empowered by our Constitution, is perhaps the best amongst all democracies.

We may argue over this fact, as to how the extensive political corruption in the government and bureaucracy continues to exist and make its way to the front page of the morning newspaper or in TV news channels on a daily basis if Our Democracy, strengthened by the voices of the masses empowered to enjoy their constitutional rights, is truely practised.

But we shouldn't forget the fact that we come to know about our political corruption through the media which has never been gagged by the ruling section in the history of independent India. (barring the controversial regime when Emergency was imposed upon the entire nation by the Indian govt in the early 70s) -- it is the freedom of thought, speech and action bestowed upon by our constitution that allows the media to take up its role as a constructive critic of our governance, as a source of extensive information to our citizens, and even in the role of a virtual vigilante in face of extensive, scandalous corruption. The question is - -in order to maintain our "traditional" sanctity of Democracy as a primary priority,are our governing institutions becoming weak, too weak to preserve democracy, thereby eroding the rights of a common man in the process, to practise it?

When it comes to international politics, India has always been too accommodating and submissive. Though the status of India in the United Nations continues to be revered to some extent by the West, the East and our immediate neighbours, recent developments reveal that India is getting arm-twisted by her neighbours, effectively losing out when engaged in bureaucratic battles.

It is sending the wrong message. Otherwise Ajmal Amir Kasab wouldn't be surviving till now, being lavishly paid for by the tax-payer's money, our money. It is incredibly outrageous to see him tossing the entire country's self-respect wildly, being taken by the scruff, spitting at our judiciary, practically at our faces. And we continue to indulge him.

Why is a brute of a man with pervert homophobia, who killed innocent people mercilessly in Mumbai on the fateful night of 26/11, being continued to allow to live, to make a mockery of our judicial system, spitting at our traditional tolerance?

When he is ignoring the court proceedings dealing with the formalization of his death-sentence, demanding to be tried in a USA court under the umbrella of human rights commissions, he is insulting our democracy, he is insulting our constitution, he is insulting us, Indian citizens.

Why are we being having to put up with the audacious obnoxity, that too at our own expense? Is it not denigrating our constitutional rights to live, think and express freely with Dignity? What is the priority of the federal structure of our Democracy --- to let us citizens to live with freedom and dignity, or to be politically correct in the international society? It is better to act brute rather than being hypocritically tolerant. Kasab and the political will of the country from he hails should be "neutralised" openly to set a precedent, a strong warning to everybody who thinks of harming Indian democracy.

Kasab's lawyer attributes his client's behaviour almost to the point of justification to the solitary confinement which imprisons Kasab to make him Suffer! But isn't THAT exactly the idea behind one's punishment by the judiciary-suffering by imprisonment?  India needs to put a stop to this nonsensical charade of a politically correct democracy.

Terrorism cannot be dealt with an intent that is guided by the need of rehabilitation. Otherwise  people like Geelani, one of the major secessionists of Kashmir shall continue to spit venom at our Democracy's face, being allowed to participate in seditious meetings as like in New Delhi yesterday in the presence of "humanists" like Arundhati Roy (so much so for these supposedly intellectual humanists).

Freedom of Speech indeed!
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-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
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"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

Drafting of the Jan Lokpal Bill

For the first time in the history of Indian democracy, Indian citizens shall be participating in a direct meeting with the government's ministers today, a meeting which carries immense practical significance.

It was significant that in yesterday's press conference the civil society members of the panel clarified all points of ambiguity, and the 'no-nonsense' stance that they have taken up to reveal in the press conference while taking on such malicious propaganda was a pleasant relief for us, and it has only strengthened our belief & trust in them, and our solidarity has become stronger than ever.

Certain sections of the political class have been palpably uncomfortable recently and seem to be a bit unnerved too, as has been evident from the malice they've been trying to infuse in the mind of the Indian citizen ever since after Anna Hazare called off his Satyagraha. The cause doesn't take any pondering to be identified. We have become used to the folly and deception that they have been personifying with shameless consistency.

A mood of 'confrontation',a healthily benign one, in the civilian panel-members' approach oozing honest confidence,is important for us to observe as it is so important that they speak in a voice that comes from you and me, and they prioritize in a similar vein upon what points to take up and stress upon. It has to be unanimous and there should be no ambiguity, as at this point of time it is important that the momentum gathered from last week's nation-wide protest does not slow down, and our belief in our leader and in our own selves remain stable and secure so that the voices of protest do not waiver, -- particularly so now that the shameless political class are showing signs of desperation, and are likely to take desperate measures to weaken the backbone of the newly strengthened solidarity of the Indian citizen.

Simplicity, honesty and self-belief shall prevail as they have always done.
Let's hope for the best.
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Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri
Consultant Physician (@Cardiology &
Critical Care)
Mumbai, India
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
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"Inherent in every Intention and Desire is
the mechanics for its Fulfilment."
- - - Khalil Gibran

Ask yourselves for once..

The last 10 days have seen some unprecedented social activity in India, and the man in the centre of what can be called a tumultuous mass uprising that India has ever seen was Anna Hazare as took his fight to protest on behalf of the Indian public against corruption right up to the government.

As he sat down on his Satyagraha mission, announcing a fast unto death if the government didn't relent, the common Indian came out of doors to show his support for Anna in an unprecedented, and more significantly in an unexpected way which caught India's political class on the wrong foot. Anna Hazare, armed with the power of solidarity that India showed with unprecedented spontaneity, literally armtwisted the government into making long-awaited constitutional provisions which would empower the common man to seek transparency in and thus hold accountable, any action of the politico-bureaucratic system which might reflect doubts of corruption and nepotism.

Apart from surprising the government, the way Anna Hazare took up the crusade on behalf of the common man surprised
the common man himself too, and in a big, big way. At the moment Anna's movement has taken a back-seat, not so in a negative way, because the government has conceded some time-bound, conditional policies which will take a definite shape in reality soon. There is no point now in dissecting Anna Hazare's movement because it has served its purpose, and a panel which would facilitate the passage of the remodelled Lokpal Bill in parliament has been formed with a specifically concrete agenda. And nor there is any point in discussing the modalities of the panel that has been created because we all are eagerly waiting to observe its effectiveness on specific dates in the future.

The way Indians came out of the confines of their homes in support of Anna, seemed to have shaken the common man awake from his decades-long slumber of apathy towards the decadent insensitivity of Indian politics. I know that my statement can stimulate vehement protests from the Indian public which is seemingly so sensitive where its holy 'middle-class self - respect' is rebelliously questioned by a conscientious voice(or one of eccentricity bordering on lunacy).

I might continue to live in a mode of self denial but if I do some impartial and honest introspection, I will agree with my conscience that this inaction has almost proceeded to define my moral character so specifically over the years, that it has only encouraged the politicians to go on unabashed with their nefarious activities.

The result of the movement led by Anna should have been immortalised as glorified history by now. Yet one finds questions which disturb the newly found strength in the wake of the social uprising. The 'glory' of victory of the mass movement seems to have eroded away fast in the days that have followed -- a big disappointment for all of us who shed moral cowardice for once and dared to dream. And that is the issue which any responsible citizen should be debating upon, and try to find answers if he really wishes to see a better future in reality.

Cynics have already started to tear down Anna Hazare's persona and the voice of protest he personifies. And one feels the presence of a dangerous malady in the common Indian psyche, something we have always mocked to abuse with a smirk over cups of tea, when we have gone on about our exercises of self-criticism following times of defeat and frustration -- when we have felt cheated (and betrayed, and defeated) looking at results of elections, or, diplomatic exercises that couldn't earn brownie points in the international arena, or even cricket matches and Olympic events (..Even when we tended shout an out-of-form Sachin Tendulkar to retirement a few years back, the 'God' we flaunt now with all records broken)

It is a cynicism that is so typical of Indians who would never accept an event in concrete reality hands down whether it is good or bad, a vain act of 'conscience' which we seem to display with fanfare, giving it a tag of 'Democracy' that promises us freedoms of thoughts, speech and rights. But there is no denying the fact that we have been irresponsible as citizens, we have been selfishly apathetic towards our political system as long as its actions did not affect the brittle security of our own individual families, another tool of self-denial in which we seem be basking in a spirit guided by nothing but glorified escapism, when we lose our way out-of-doors in the darkness of a crude reality that our political system has been forcing upon us over the decades since India went republic, increasingly so and without any scrupules.

It would have helped my dear compatriot -- all this collective cynicism of the conscientious middle-- class, when we were being cheated by the ruling politicians. We were quiet all the while, effectively speaking. We were never unanimously vociferous in directing our vent and Holy Cynicism, or came out together in the streets when the corrupt faces, one after another, were exposed at a ridiculous rate of one scam per week, did we?

Let's face some crudely basic questions, sans theories of economics and the concepts behind bulls and bears in financial highways,
sans the statistics of inflation and GDPs.
Did you shout asking for Kalmadi's head or baying for Tainted Thomas's blood, in a united voice as a nation disgraced? NO. Because you didn't get a reduced salary on a couple of months when you read in the papers and heard in a TV channel that the Commonwealth Games Organising Company headed by a criminal named Kalmadi had
cheated India of an astronomical amount of taxpayers money, did you? Because your business didn't do drastically bad when it was found that the nation has been cheated of Rs, 1700 crores due to a graft in the allocation of the 2G spectrum, did it?
Because you didn't have the feeling that it might have been your money that some shameless MPs flashed on a disgraced day in our parliament, did you? And since you didn't 'feel' the loss, you didn't react. So this is the quality of your spirit of nationalism, your fiercely proud patriotism, with which you question not only the honesty but the spontaneity too of last week's social stir.

In the backdrop of Anna Hazare's movement one can now see an astonishing picture comprising of three different facets of India. 1)The spirit of India personified by a 72 year old man taking on a system singlehandedly by its horns,
2)the young face of India coming out in his support with uncorrupted belief, and
3)a cynical middle-class questioning the rebel ensemble with its archetypal smirk, that's you and me.
Think over the picture of ours that we are putting up for the old crusader, and for those restless dynamic hearts who still dream of a shining India, and for which they can make a non-violent mass protest that shakes the entire country.

What does your conscience tell you? Or is it that you too have been guilty of the moral cowardice that I have displayed over the years? You don't have to answer anybody. Just ask yourself in your own privacy, and Think over the answer you get. Then act accordingly. I,for myself, am still hopeful of our conscience meeting on a common ground sometime in the near future. It all depends on us -- you and me. Or is it too good to be true?
------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"There is a Purpose behind us all. The
Whole intends to do Something through
us." -- Swami Vivekananda

The Best Medicine..

I have been suffering from this neuropathy affecting my left hand over the last 6 months. Clinically one would brand the nerve disorder as Left Ulnar Mononeuropathy - the ulnar nerve is one of the 2 main nerves supplying the arm and hand - in my case it is the left one and it is my left hand that has been affected. I've been experiencing an ever-increasing pain, to the point of being excruciating,and an almost constant, weirdly tingling sensation in my left hand, particularly in the ring and little fingers, and the area of the palm below them which do not exactly move the way I wish them to.

The condition seems to have developed, according to my neurologist, due to extensive playing of guitar, an exercise I had indulged in with passion, in my late teens and early 20 s, when I used to play in the college rock-band which had a rather brief yet excitingly joyous professional stint later on. I had formally learnt classical and folk guitar(like flamenco, the Catalan folk)which is played finger-style,and that requires a 'classical' acoustic guitar which traditionally sports a much broader finger-board than usual. That necessitated my left fingers to stretch extensively,and all the more so when I used to hold the broken chords in the background when we played those Scorpions numbers(I still remember those initially painful hours during rehearsals as we played songs like "When The Smoke Is Going Down").

Over the last few months the left ring & little fingers had forced my hand into a clawed shape of submission, the fingers getting contracted and flexed at the little bone joints, a seemingly eternal state of Spasm that was not exactly painless. I find that rather ironic as the name of my rock-band(well it was 'mine' just as it was any other co-member's) was SPASM too, a name I'd kept myself along with Miku, the bass-guitarist who went on to become a hand-surgeon himself later on. Now that's one of 'those quirks' of destiny,isn't it?

Coming back to my neuropathy, the pain had,at one point of time,increased so much that even the strongest painkillers were not being effective, and I had become literally sick of pain-killing injections. Nothing seemed to work,and the fact that I could no more hold chords, or even use my left fingers while playing guitar (ultimately I had to quit my favourite pass-time activity) only added to my frustrated, depressing woes.

Three weeks back, as I was having my morning cold coffee, my 21 month-old daughter tiptoed her way into the hall, nimble-footed, and stood in front of me, looking at me with her sparkling, bright eyes. I knew that look. She wanted to climb up and sit on my stomach, straddling her legs on the sides facing her father - her favourite "seat" in the morning, as she would excitedly tell me how the pigeons had looked at her from outside the kitchen window or how busily the crows had pecked at the crumbs on the parapet. That day I found it difficult to give her a hand to take her morning seat. The pain was too much in my left hand which found itself too weak to carry her weight. I knew she would be disappointed.

As I looked back at her eyes with helpless apology written all over my face and with a tinge of guilt too, trying to shake my afflicted hand off the pain, I spoke to her in my Bengali mother-tongue, telling her,"Aaj baba'r haate khub byatha je.."(which vaguely translates into - "But there is too much pain in father's hands today...". She isn't too familiar with that language as her father has got only a handful of relatives and none in Mumbai to pay the occasional visit so that the language is spoken.
I really don't know what she understood, but she didn't show any disappointment. What she showed in her eyes was gentle and tender care. She took my hand in her soft, little fingers kissing it mildly, looked up at me and said in broken English,"Baba?pain no...Baba?pain no no.."..

Well, my left hand hasn't exactly stopped paining since, but that was the last time I felt the pain. I have not needed any pain-killers since then simply because I don't feel any pain anywhere, anymore. And as I watch my daughter growing up each day, every hour,every minute,I just wonder how beautiful life can be for anybody in the simplest of ways, in spite of all the pains & troubles, the aches and breaks it keeps on dishing out on a regular basis. No matter how much one cries, life always gets back to you as a great leveller, giving you something to smile about, and perhaps with a little reward at the end.

It is just only a matter of time. Let it be.
------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"There is a Purpose behind us all. The
Whole intends to do Something through
us." -- Swami Vivekananda

DIGITALIZED MOVEMENTS AND RECENT TRENDS

[Dedicated to Dr Jnanananda Mukhopadhyay-my college-mate in CNMC]
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi,

The common Indian (or the Indian commoner -- if you prefer) is back again. My wife tells me I've started like The One too..
While I've been searching for a check-marked coat, I noticed that it has been a fascinating few fast dissipating weeks that all of confronted recently.

The archetypal couch-potato that I am, as I continue to watch on TV the massively spontaneous mass uprisings, I wonder in awe about the Collective Strength of us, Common Men(and Women), and it is a calming reassurance for the cynical minds that : Yes, It Can Be Done.

I'm sure that against the backdrop of the middle east 'renaissance', the eager anthropologist and the social observer didn't miss to neglect a definite pattern in human behaviour that had been theorized by scholars decades ago, but was not believed in entirety because an ever- accelerating process of technological evolution (and thus enabling technological advancement) in the late 20th century had ensured one definitive sociological phenomenon -- our society got segmented into smaller (in size, not necessarily so in relevance and importance) institutions -- small and essentially Isolated, that allowed the same basic diurnal activities of the human species to be carried out -- Families, which provide the stage for the same activities(and Acts) being carried out, to the day, at this very moment.(Well, the 'modes and modalities' in which the activities are carried out are quite different, but that, being a subtle variation, is not relevant to the present issue at hand that you have to bear with the products of the conditioned dyslexic I suspect myself to be..

This 'isolation', in the context of quality, quantity, subjectivity, objectivity, (...could you suggest more? My vain attempts to put on masks of expertise in philosophy, or sociology, or anthropology, shall never succeed, and I can only see doom..)shall always continue to vary, sometimes drastically. Though neosociological (a term borrowed without permission) trends seem to indicate that this concept of 'isolation' shall wipe itself out, I have a point here to argue and disbelieve for good reasons.

The 'neo--sociological isolation' shall perennially continue to exist over turning pages(or e-pages) of geography and across slides(or pps) on demography, (well at least till geography and demography shall cease to exist themselves). I fully agree that yes, technological evolution did lead to the present social structure where mass or collective actions of human behaviour are much less palpable or directly observable in any given situation, than individual behavioural patterns (and which thus dominate to affect our senses on any single day, anytime and anywhere on our family-stages).

Yet I find it a paradox: it is technological advancement -- that is throwing exploring lights on community behaviour at the moment. We just cannot ignore the role of the internet in all the recent changes the world has witnessed . There seems to be a new air of hope all around -- one barely expected to witness the way people changed systems in the Middle East recently, from Tunisia to Egypt, where freedom of expression had been usurped almost as a historical tradition. Man shall continue to dream and new ideas will always flow in, as they had done over the last 50 years. What clearly stands out is Absolute Intent and the way people used it, the practical execution to bring down everything that is stagnant and decadent.

One of the strongest factors behind this is the Internet -- the way people have used it for healthy communication, in e-forums and social networking sites as they fought to dream, to fight on...

Awareness has spread all over the world rapidly in its most unadulterated form, (we have witnessed sheer lack of speed and dilution of the original intent with time and peripheral distribution, in the networked fringes, breaking so many promising dreams before us, things just "fizzed" out)..I think India's fairytale is a very strong pointer about how we should proceed tomorrow, governance and administration at any level and in any office being amongst the foremost priorities of them all..

The Egyptian revolution and the 'mould' its socio-politics has chosen to be impressed by, are not Causes. They are Results (which I choose to qualify as unavoidable) of the Collective Consciousness of a group of people present in every cross-section of society, driven to secure unision by a variety of factors that they felt so as to prioritise in the same bracket. We all heard the barely audible pitch of voices accelerating to a crescendo, causing audible cracks in the glass that shattered away noisily in the palaces of the feudal elite. It was this Collective Emotion that spread digitally and was shared all over the world in the speed of light that hastened and strengthened the movement.

The prominent context which I'm trying to point out is the 'form' in which informations were despatched and received. Almost a century ago, a similar need to spread and share valuable information had become absolutely imperative in the European battle-fields where the First World War was being fought. Spread they did, in a hitherto relatively unknown technology which constituted of a manual exercise that printed a meaningful sequence of 'dots' and 'dashes' on a piece of paper, in a remarkably simple way that allowed transfer of information in incredible speed - the dots and dashes containing the essence of information zipped to and fro across continents and oceans, from one station to another in forms of electromagnetic quanta.

While the speed of 'actual' transfer (the physicality of the process) has remained almost the same, the time taken for the information to reach the recipient's brain, get registered and comprehended in its fullest form has come down drastically. More important is the format. Through the world-wide-web , ideas are shared in virtual audio-visual forms which incorporate the factor of 'Emotion' (which I believe you are fitter than yours truly to remotely attempt to conceptualise) to the data -- and that affects the result in an entirely different scale the parameters of which are neither digitally controlled nor contollable, in concrete digit units - a factor which man dreams to control with more authoritative volition some day,
(again - the concept of androids, humanoids, avatars is beyond the current issue. Though it would be interesting to observe when overzealous fertile brains (?geniusoids-- cerebroids) shall tinker about anti-corruptoids, fanaticoids, or nihilistoids, agnosticoids, even jihaditoids.. over superconductor receptacles containing hybrid consummables of siliconised caffeinoids)

And THAT is exactly why the process cannot be withdrawn or ever withdraw by itself (I'm putting in brackets against possible provocative protests, of course digitalised, coming from the [[ Academists, or Acosmists or Monists, even Nihilists or Primitivists -- .. They get me petrified to inaction! Do cover for me because I'm retreating, with just my Pen in hand)

Dreams and passions are shared now in the most elemental forms, no longer a question of when or where, and the echoes continue to reverberate to be manifested later, someday and somewhere else, so we have to Got to Continue: speak, listen, learn, share and adapt. All,.. to Live.

But again, That is what Life is all about, isn't it? I shall be keen to know what YOU say..

------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
http://jogyou963.blogspot.com
http://anirbanspeak.blogspot.com
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"There is a Purpose behind us all. The
Whole intends to do Something through
us." -- Swami Vivekananda

GOOD MORNING INDIA

"Good Morning India!"

"..Over the last 96 hours, we have witnessed one septuagenarian, armed with only Honour and Dignity, and the Will to preserve the two without an iota of compromise, take India's corrupt establishment by its roguish horns and making it relent to submission -- basically doing the dirty job for us, all of us. And of course for that generation too that follows us in toddling steps at the moment. It blindly trusts us to be responsible parents, keeping its own honour and dignity to be defended by the safety of its parents' hands.
A dawn has never ever been so beautiful as today's, breaking to soothen my tired eyes -- I'm really cherishing the first spoils of the victory that you all have won for me). And
while a new, rejuvenated India wakes up
to celebrate history, we shall not bother much about this non-bothering lot, because it takes all types of antithesis to keep a system running, perhaps as a reminder of the oft- digressed virtue of Responsibility and a lesson to be learnt from time to time that one cannot afford to drop guard.

It's an irony of truth too that he has gone ahead and about his mission for those who, over the last 96 hours, have barely bothered to care a hoot about what India is undergoing, and how, and arrogantly enough, even why. But of course they shall display their birth- rights to share all that shall be attained once the technicalities of India's new anti-corruption bill get sorted out to be formalised for practical execution..

I do not wish to spoil the First Indian Morning in any way. It's just that I felt a bit sad last night when I heard in a television debate,a couple of renowned "intellectuals" still sounding unconvinced, and more strikingly, absolutely dud and opaque to any sort of ideas, or reasons... Or for that matter even dry, dumb logic with which you poke(for pure and free entertainment's sake)these thick-skinned descendants of the primordial primates commoners like yours truly share common along ancestral lines. It's only that in these "cases", Darwinian evolution seems to have gone awfully awry..

"Elite pragmatism", for me,seems to wear a very different definition, essentially negative, at times when such acts of cerebration are on rampant display courtesy these bunches of luminous idiots who suffer from verbal diarrhoea trying to hog the limelight for no apparent rhyme and reason.

No more negatives now.
I wish to scream to all of you "Good Morning India",and of course to express my gratitude for the victory all of you have gloriously fought to win for me, my family, my neighbour, and the next neighbour....

PS : We should start a new calender which starts with 9th April 2011... Just a fleeting thought from the opened floodgates I am feeling subjected to, in this glorious morning that greets me with Hope.

Be good, all of you.. ..."

-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

The world supports Anna

Here's a couple of excerpts from an e-correspondence I had last night with my good friend Arin Basu who is a resident of Wellington, New Zealand.

"-----Original Message-----
From: Arin Basu <arin.basu@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 06:59:48

At least Anna Hazare is from our dad's generation, which is a reassuring thing that all did not go in vain. So, what are you planning to do about supporting Anna Hazare's fast and his movement?
/Arin
Sent from my iPad......"
---------------------------

Arin was keen to know about the sweeping change India is undergoing right now.

As I wrote back,
"... Sadly enough, I observe some pathetic intellectualisation of his movement by a section of the "cocktail elite" from the media, branding it as 'television tamasha' and anti-development. (3 hours back I heard Manu Joseph , editor of Open magazine, commenting in a TV newshour debate," There are two "Indias" - 'us' and those who vote.."!) I wonder how many Indias we have created to confront by now, with our progressive intellectual exercises in tennis club evenings and caffeine afternoons in art galleries, and which one to identify for my 2 year old daughter..

It is easy to loose direction when any movement gathers momentum ( sadly anti-physics!) and we should be watchful especially with our intellectual watchdogs barking in intellectual unision, yet I can only see Hope.."
---------------------------------
Arin's reply :
"-----Original Message-----
From: Arin Basu <arin.basu@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 2011 07:44:32
To: <drchodri@yahoo.co.in>
Subject: Re: A Letter to a friend
I share very similar sentiments as yours. My advantage is that, I do not live in India and therefore I do not have to live up
with the kind of crap that the magazine editor of Open for example was saying in TV as you wrote, "us" and "them" India. To me, India is one country, dammit, at least it was when I last checked. People may look
and talk a little different (I mean then again not that different),but we are all in it together.

I am excited to follow Anna Hazare's movement. It's exciting to think
we are finally going to get a strong ombudsman agency to take care of
corruption in public life, and that it's going to happen in front of
our eyes. It can't get better than that.
/Arin
Sent from my iPad...."
---------------------------

It was with great sadness that I bitched about India's respected and reasoned journalist Manu Joseph who seems to have lost all sanity and sensitivity (along with the money Hasan must have duped him off too, to stash away in his Scandinavian black pool).
And here is one of the exact foci where the vain irony of India's destiny finds secure shelter. Here is an Indian who pledges support and solidarity towards his compatriots in one of the most testing times Indian democracy has ever confronted. He provides us hope with a voice that represents what the world is feeling about the sweeping change India is undergoing,... and a pointer too to the degree of hurt exasperation and hatred we all have gradually developed over the years as a reaction to the utter decadence our political-bureaucratic 'mafia' has been cheating us to, with criminal apathy and complete lack of scrupules.
And it points to the intellectual corruption that has eaten away into segments of India's 'elite and the educated' -- the ever - conscientious fifth column who should be guiding us to freedom of propriety. It is our own people that has been letting us down, sitting smug in air-conditioned seminars over coffee and wine. Manu Joseph seems to be the personification of The Great Indian Cerebral Hypocrisy that finds Anna Hazare's fight a 'TV show', and brands India's new found voice as anti development.

This is one utter bovine faecal material that has been flourishing in our contemplative educated elite with heavily accented thoroughfare, that we should be guarding against...
Let's go for it.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein

MODERN TIMES - FARCE

Sometimes I get the feeling that I've forgotten Good Old Laughter.. And the 'existential' need to put everything in the back of the mind, just laugh the garbage off and over, to ''enjoy the inevitable'', specially with modern times with all its baggages weighing down so heavily..
In case you get the same feeling occasionally...


-----------------------------------------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry®
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dr.Anirban Chaudhuri, M.B.B.S
Consultant Physician [special interest
in Cardiology &Critical Care]
Mumbai, India
(+91)9870611252
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
"The most beautiful thing we can
experience is the Mysterious."
---- Albert Einstein