Free Sax

This comes in the sudden outburst of the summer heat in Mumbai. People are getting even crazier than ever. Why? Nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century, the Maharashtra government will now ban sex education!

For a moment there, it does seem like a joke but what the heck! They are damn serious about this.
Because sex education, according to them, is against "Indian culture." WHAT??!! What Indian culture are you talking about? The culture that has the most extensive book on sex named Kamasutra or the culture that sculpted the Khajuraho temples? Indian culture, also known as Hinduism(please read that this is not a religion in the strict sense), is not against any form of education. The main aim of Hinduism is to acquire knowledge - to understand the world better. In view of this, I feel that we are not taking a step backwards, but a leap behind the times when the Vedas were written. That is a whole lot of time.

Sex education, however ridiculous it may sound, is a very essential part of our lives. Many people, having no formal sex education, misunderstand aspects regarding it that commit mistakes which are drastic to not just them, but people around them too. With so many sexually transmitted diseases on the move, students need to be taught about these.

This also brings us to another topic - How far does banning anything works, esp. in a democracy? You may ban books or films, the next day the same will be available for a much lower cost in the piracy market. You ban sex education, people will find a way to educate themselves and these methods may not be the proper ones. So, we can say, banning does not work in a democracy. There are always loopholes in the system.

So, rather than banning stuff like these, give people the option of using it or not. At least you can control it while it is legal.

Sax and Violins

Its been a very long time since I have entered something here. Not that I was really busy, just too lazy. I am having the QWERTYphobia with all the typing I have to do in college! gak! But after getting placed in a leading software company, I can breathe a bit easier.

Anyways, getting to the topic at hand. Just about two weeks back, I visited the Kitab festival happening in Mumbai. I finally got the opportunity to see a film that I wanted to see for a very long time. War and Peace. It is a documentary by Mr. Anand Patwardhan ( http://www.patwardhan.com/ ) mainly revolving around the Nuclear weaponry acquired by nations across the world. The film is divided into two parts - the first part concentrates mainly on the nuclear cold war between India and Pakistan and leads back to 1999 when India had successfully completed five underground Nuke tests in Pokhran ...and the Buddha smiled! Following this, Pakistan conducted six tests of its own.

Mr Patwardhan points out how each aspect of the tests had pinched the sentiments of various sections of the society. Some of them are -

1. The Buddhists were annoyed by the code word used for determing the success or failure of the tests. Their argument was that the Buddha was a peace loving being and the Nukes were weapons of war.
2. The people living in the villages near Pokhran saw a sudden increase in the number of patients of cancer. They suspected that this rise was caused by the nuke tests.

The urban and suburban middle class however thought of this as a good thing as this blotted India on the world map.

In the second part of the film, Mr Patwardhan shows us how the rest of the world was affected by nukes. Beginning with the nation that was the first and the only one to actually use nukes in warfare. The United States of America. He shows us how over 55 years after the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, the Japanese were still trying to cope up with the after effects of the bombs. (The film was made before 2005).

In conclusion, we understand that the development of Nuclear Science has brought more misery than human advancement. In India, for example, just about 2.5% of the total electric energy produced is generated by nuclear power plants in contrast to 6% from wind.

Why are we the Monkeys?
After the film, Mr Patwardhan showed a small music video. The message of the music video was that the "lower caste" people were depicted as monkeys in the Ramayana as Hanuman. Now I am getting too bored to elaborate on that. That too for just one reader. Ahem.

Anyways, I will be updating soon.
Till then, goodbye!

Paradise Behind the Wall

Its been a long time since my last entry. I've been busy with my PLs. Thats Preparation Leave - for people who dont know. Its kind of a mini-holiday for us engineers. This is the time when the actual studies begin.

Two weeks into it and I yet havent started! No surprise. However, I had occupied myself with certain other stuff. For example this film festival that went on. I knew about it when half of the festival was over. So, I could only catch the last three days of the festival! But I am not complaining. Those 3 days were all worth the hassle. I got to see 4 of Majid Majidi's films at the 5th Asian Film Festival, Mumbai.

Man, is he brilliant! Amazing screenplay, direction and sound engineering! I started with Children of Heaven, which was also the first film I saw at the festival. His method of ending a film is amazing especially with the symbolism used. This film ended showing goldfish as the symbol for Hope and Prosperity.

The next day, I saw two films "The Lone Flower" and Majidi's "Baran". The former was quite a good film however incomparable Majidi's work. The Majician, as I call him now, showed an amazing set of subtle expressions through his actors. The title character, for example, doesnt speak a word in the entire film but conveys a lot through her expressions.

The next film by Majidi, that I saw, was "The Father" which was a story of a boy, who had lost his father. He became the sole provider for his family and hence went travelling for money. When he returns, he sees that his mother has married another man. This infuriates him. The story goes about showing the relation between this boy and his step-father. By the end of this film, I saw a startling connection between the 3 films.
Majidi, starts his films by showing a money transaction with the opening scene showing hands. However, he ends his films with an image of water. This observation led me into thinking why he did that. My interpretation was that he want to bring his protagonist from the lowly level of money and materialism to a much higher level of purity as that of water!

Thinking about this connection, I went to see the next of his films. "The Willow Tree." A story of a man who had been blind for most of his life but a sudden turn of events makes him regain his sight. It is a story about the mental conflict that he has between the world that he had imagined as a blind man and the real world. Again a mixture of subtle expressions and actions make this film a collector's item. Analysing this film, I however realised one point. The observation that I had made earlier wasnt applicable here. Majidi had started this film with "water" as the symbol and ended with "paper." Thinking about it for a while, I figured that his character had already been at the level of water, the purest form. However, I still am confused about what the paper symbolizes.
If you have an interpretation, please comment.



Anyway, after that, I got back to studying for my German language examinations. I finished with the exams yesterday and am awaiting the result. So, Aufwiedersehen!.

Nervous Fantasies

Ok! Now the title makes no sense whatsoever. Then again I would not care any less.

This is me, totally screwed up. Doing something I like in a manner that I couldn’t hate more. That’s me in an Engineering college affiliated to some university called the University of Mumbai! Completely bored! Clueless of what I would do next.

No! Not what I would do after graduation! Heck, no! What I would do now? With these people who come to the classroom everyday and call themselves "teachers"! I beg to differ! If these beings can be called teachers, then I can very well be called Michael Jordan!

Stop looking at the paragraph above! I just wanted to write one with no full-stops. Pathetic, aren't I? That’s what 2 years of studying Engineering in this college does to you! Copying assignments and experiments has made us human copiers. Well if we didn't have photocopying machines, engineers would have moonlighted as notaries. That’s what we learn here. Copy and thou shall succeed! If you are brave enough to do something by yourself, get ready for an argument with the "teacher" for a higher grade! Its pure 100% poppycock!

Now I am getting even more bored with this. Well, I have some more copying to do! So, goodbye! And no, I am not called Michael Jordan.