My Experiences in a Cab

Off late, I have started traveling in my office cab for commuting. You call it cost cutting, recession, economic blockade, promotion or logics – I call it Hobson's choice (A free choice in which only one option is offered).

While traveling, the people who accompany me in the cab always ask at least one question to the cab driver. Purely depending on the nature of question, you can make out the profile that the person is handling. I bring to you a few of them:

Question: My drop is at Road No. 12, tell me exactly at what time will I reach home, you can also take 5 minutes as grace time?
Conclusion: This person is a Manager because all he cares about and wants is an answer.

Question: Will I be dropped first?
Conclusion: For sure an Assistant Manager who is tired of trying to get to a Manager’s position. All he cares now is reaching home fast.

Question: Who are the other people in the cab?
Conclusion: A definite Team Leader who is more worried about others than his own self. Sorry but the cut throat completion has made him so.

Question: Is the AC working?
Conclusion: Just been promoted to a Senior Associate position, so he thinks he is going to get extra benefits everywhere (to tell you we never had an AC cab).

Question: Driver Bhai, Is this cab going to Route no. 7?
Conclusion: Definitely an associate, he just wants to be sure that he makes no mistake because even if anyone else also does, he will be blamed.

Question: Can you please check again if I am listed in your Cab list?
Conclusion: Bottom of hierarchy, a junior associate because he knows he gets things only when no one wants it.

Question: Do we get cabs everyday?
Conclusion: A New Joinee, because he knows things are not the way they appear at first.

According to Mamkol, “Wish we had answers instead of questions.”

’How’ fair is fair?

A few days back I went to a shop to get some stuff and there I saw a couple of small girls who were not more than 6 years old. They started staring at me and one of them whispered into other’s ear, “dekh kitna chitta hai (see how fair he is)”. Suddenly it gave me a shock more than anything else. The obsession with fair color starts by the time we are born.

A kid who doesn’t even know what is right or wrong is injected with the idea that tells him ‘fair is beautiful’. Beauty never lies in color and had that been true, brains and personality, wit, humor and intellect would have become ‘archival’ words.

People in my office say I am smart not because of what I know or what I say but just because I am ‘fair’. We talk about racism, write about it and even hate it but it is we who actually promote it. See a matrimonial website, the first word they ask for is ‘fair’. And whether we do it deliberately or not, it definitely means ‘looking down’ at ‘not so fair’ color.

Let us first agree that we do believe in racism and then only, we can cure it. Charity begins at home and let ‘me’ start it right away by looking at you as ‘human’ and not ‘fair’ or ‘not fair’. Remember that I am a human being like you, born in the same way as you, live on the same earth; eat breath and drink exactly like you, and even I am going to die also like you.

I am one of you and you are one of me and we are one of ‘us’. This actually reminds me of a poem I read some time back:

When I was born I was BLACK,
When I'm sick I'm BLACK,
When I go in the sun I'm BLACK,
When I'm cold I'm BLACK,
When I die I'll be BLACK.

As for you

When you're born you're PINK,
When you're sick, you're GREEN,
When you go in the sun you turn RED,
When you're cold you turn BLUE,
And when you die you turn PURPLE.

And you still have the guts to call me colored.

According to Mamkol, “If we wake up one day and discover everybody has the same skin color, we will surely get some basis for discrimination by noontime.”

'Whose' tomatoes' were they anyways?

A middle aged man went to a vegetable shop and asked for one kilogram of tomatoes. As the man was putting tomatoes into the basket, he realized that a few of them were rotten and asked the vegetable seller to throw them out of the stock otherwise they will spoil the entire lot of tomatoes. The man bought his one kg of the best tomatoes and left. The rotten lot did not belong to him.

Then, the vegetable seller decided to separate the rotten tomatoes from the fresh lot and put them in a basket. After he was done with his work, he threw the basket of rotten tomatoes into the municipal dustbin. So, the rotten bunch didn't belong to him either.

After a while, a pitiable lady with torn clothes saw the basket and started searching for the 'not so rotten' tomatoes in the basket. For her, those tomatoes could prove to be a day's full meal. But as soon as she sat down to check the basket, a goat came running and put her head into the basket to eat the tomatoes. The lady tried to push the goat away but it was not that easy.

Now, we had a fight between a human and an animal for those rotten tomatoes, which any one of us would never even care to look at. The wrestle was on and there was no visible winner. I just stood there to see who is going to have the last say.

Suddenly a big truck came in and I realized it was the Municipality garbage truck that comes to clean the garage bins everyday. Without even looking at what was happening, the driver hooked the big dustbin, lifted it up and landed on his truck and left. Both the poor lady and the goat left the place in a normal manner and then I realized it could have been a usual story for them.

None of them got that lot of tomatoes and may be no one will. But I still think who actually deserved the tomatoes and I cannot find an answer. If you have one, do let me know?

According to Mamkol, “The easiest way to eradicate economic disparity between the people is to kill the poor.”

How Free Are We

Who says we are not free? It is just the way you look at your freedom and nothing more. Let us start and you see how much freedom one enjoys:

• You have the choice to buy anything in this country no matter where you belong to what if the inflation is above 12.5%
  
  
  
• You are free to protest on the streets for anything you strongly feel about what if the police and army fires bullets on you
  
  
  
• You are free to marry a girl or boy of any religion what if the community slaughters you after that
  
  
  
• You are free to vote and choose your representative what if the hotchpotch collation government makes no sense of it when the party with lowest seats comes in power
  
  
  
• You are free to boycott elections what if still only 5% voters decide the fate of your entire state and politicians form a government with all the pride
  
  
  
• You are free to apply for any course in any university in the country what if the reservations make your chances negligible
  
  
  
• You are free to write or speak anything what if your remarks label you as an ‘anti-national’ element
  
  
  
• You are free to fight against any injustice in the court of law what if the verdict takes decades to come
  
  
  
• Girls have equal freedom and opportunity like boys what if rape, SATI, molestation and dowry are still a part of their life
  
  
  
• You are free to guard your land what if hundreds are killed to make the authorities realize this fact
  
  
  
• You are free to watch anything on TV what if the government puts a ban on certain channels and programs
  
  
  
• You are free to live in any part of the country what if you are sure to die if communal and regional riots arise
  
  
  
• You are free to have a style statement what if the extremists beat you up for copying western world and defying cultural boundaries labeling you as ‘firnagis’
  
  
  
• You are free to take any professional sport including hockey what if only cricket comes with a good future bringing you money and publicity
  
  
  
• You are free to apply for passports, rations cards, voter ID cards and licenses what if you cannot get them until you shell out the bribe

• You are free to take up any government job in the country what if there are none available at this moment of time
  
  
  
• You are free to die of hunger or poverty or any other illness what if you cannot commit suicide as it is a crime

You are created as a free creature by GOD what if the humans have put all the limitations and restrictions on you

According to Mamkol, “Freedom indicates the liberation on doomsday”.

How "Hospitable" Are You

By Shaikh Tawheed Rehman

I always thought I have the potential of a good writer as my lengthy love letters always delivered good results just like Google. This thought of mine was further supported by my Master’s degree in Journalism but even after two years of the completion of my degree I haven’t written anything yet.

Yes, I cannot write but I stepped down. It’s not as though I can’t put words together and construct a good sentence, weave those sentences into paragraphs and come up with an eloquent written piece. It’s just that I cannot write objectively. Even if I try to, emotions always seem to creep in and take over the profession. So I just give up the idea of writing and keep myself happy in reading and learning.

What prompted me to write this time is out of frustration caused by my professional Gods – Newspapers. I was told during my degree that journalists should choose their words carefully as they never know who the reader might be. It took me two years to find one such word and unfortunately that one word appeared in a reputed newspaper of India, The Indian Express. The Editor in his editorial piece titled “The fires just don’t die down” dated August 13, 2008 available at their website http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEF20080813015151&Title=First+Editorial&rLink=0 describes the “100 acre” Kashmiri land as “inhospitable”. As it is quite evident that a piece of land cannot be inhospitable, the Editor means to say people in Kashmir are inhospitable. And I wonder how senior journalist approach to events and start generalizing things or events.

Conflict in Kashmir has its own context and there is no wrong in standing up and fighting for your rights. A lot of nations have done it. During India’s struggle for Independence from East India Company, people in India, regardless of their caste or religion, were united till the end unlike in Kashmir, where a community fled overnight.

Religion in this region has always been a root cause to all the problems. Majority of Muslims in Kashmir share their religious proximity with the neighboring country, Pakistan, and majority of Hindus with India. So, if Kashmirs are not comfortable with India there is no guarantee that Hindus in Jammu will find relative peace with Pakistan and this will continue. So the question of accession to Pakistan doesn’t exist anywhere.

By the way, we don’t want a partition of Jammu and Kashmir like India and Pakistan. A Kashmiri just wants freedom from such administration. We don’t want the administration to formulate heinous acts and implement them in Kashmir, we just don’t want our brothers being detained illegally and then tortured to death, we don’t want forced disappearances, we don’t want false media reports or tags, we don’t want being killed and tortured by our own Kashmiri police men, we don’t want any mothers tears, not any more…

We just want our freedom, our nation, and our rights. And if all this sums up to being “inhospitable”, we are proud for being so.

Options To Death – The Only Choice

I wake up in the morning to realize that all the essential food items in my home are over and there is not a single grain of food left to eat. My 2 year old son is asking for milk, my wife is silent because she knows about the things but my old mother is unaware and is shouting and asking for her morning tea.

I stand still like a rock not knowing what to do but I leave my home to see if I will be able to do something. Nothing is accessible outside and the money lies wasted in my pocket. The first step out of my house and I get a beating from the policeman standing just outside my home. Not a single word is uttered but the beating continues but I somehow manage to escape from there and reach the main road. All shops closed, a deserted look and the feeling of pain surround me. Before I can even get a good look of where I stand, an army man comes charging to me. He beats he with the back of his gun until I bleed and tells me to go back before he opens fire on me. But those words have no effect on me and I just laugh.

That laugh boils the temperature of the army men and they all start beating me in all the possible ways they can. They throw me from one corner of the road to another and all that comes to me is the face of my 2 year old son who is starving for food, my old mother who cannot survive without food and my helpless but silent wife.

They don’t allow me to say anything and push me back into the lane where the earlier policeman is waiting for his turn to try his beating skills which he showcases perfectly. And finally I am pushed back into my house. Seeing my face, my wife cries out loudly but my son is silent. I do not know what to do and I have nothing to do.

I take out my entire family in my car and move out of the house. Policemen try to stop me but I don’t, they fire but I cannot afford to stop. Bullets everywhere but I have no option. As I reach near the army banker, they shoot a grenade and next thing I hear is a big bang.

No more worries now, everything is silent. No need for milk, food or anything else. I can see my mother, my wife and my two year old kid resting for ever. They are no more and so am I.

But before I take the last breath, I just wanted to see their faces once again but I cannot because the next grenade stopped me from even doing that. We all had to die, either by every passing day or in one go – these were the only options left here. But still, I love my land and I am not ashamed of what I did – this was my only option.

This is my story and this is my Kashmir. Welcome one and all . . .

According to Mamkol, “Life always has a connotation, let us give death also a meaning”.

Kashmir Terminology

Of late there have been a lot of terms that have become quiet common in usage. But there meanings have been determined by the conditions prevailing in the valley. This is just an endeavor to uncover such terms.

Hartal: Lawful justification for not going to workplace

Protest: Shouting so loudly that your voice strike the walls of offices of concerned authorities

Identity Cards: Lifeline of a Kashmiri

Crackdown: Where you are down and your bones cracked

Blast: Minimizing the minority of Kashmiris

Road Map: Exactly a map but without signs and symbols

26^th January & 15^th August: Monstrous days

Cross Firing: Easiest way of suicide

Surrender: Get a gun, give it back and own a job

Round Table Conference: Where the center is ambiguity

Dialogue: One-way communication

Peace Process: Hypothetical concept

Cease Fire: Shoot limited number of bullets

Custodial Killings: Natural death

Search Operations: Employ five laborers for a week to get things again in place

Boycott: Cannot catch it, so we are not with it

Leader: Every 10^th person on the street

Government: Does it exist?

Election: In-house joke

Laws, Rules & Regulations: In books only

Tear Gas: It is always ‘in’

Stone Pelting: Oldest and most economic way

Lating Position: So that you don’t become Mr. late

Fidayeens: Omnipresent

Cordon: Surround everything else than the place you have to attack

Freedom: Whose & how

Press Conference: He got no one else to talk to / dying to speak

Media: Avenues of revenue

Human Rights Violations: Twice a day

Curfew: Prehistoric but relevant

Militant: Terrorist & Mujahid would be too extreme

Bunker: Next-door neighbor

Third Party: Optional party of Kashmiris

LOC: Out Of Control

According to Mamkol, “Do you know that terminology is not a word but a complete election – T(ERM END) + E(LECTION) + R(EGIONAL) M(EGER) + I(NC HEADS) + NO(LEFT) + LO(SP) + G(8Summit) + Y(ES TO IAEA) – next elections”.