The Cynical Indian

#NEVEREVER Everyone loves scandals and when it has sexual connotations, the inherent voyeurs in us have a field day. I am sure such instincts are gender, caste, race, nation neutral .  The fall of the great and mighty and the reinforcement of the "I told you so " is an acrid reminder of all that is not right behind the righteous halo of our idols.  The popularity of the #metoo unfortunately seems to stem not from a genuine concern to bring culprits to book but merely to satisfy our inherent depravity in deriving pleasure from the sufferings or failings of others. I am still struggling to understand the intent and direction which the movement might take.  The reason why I use popularity instead of success of the movement is the " impotent" unleashing of fury which social media sites have been able to provide as a weapon. The number of hits , the like buttons and retweets, if expected to bring justice,  can best be ascribed to a good quality weed. ...

WEST AND ISLAM : SEPARATED WITH MALICE Conflict and the need for a clash with "Others" has been the defining moments of civilizations. The creation of "Others" as distinct from self  seems to be the one common denominator across ages. Samuel Huntington at the end of the cold war aptly predicted the Clash of civilizations as another mode of self destruction . The colonial atrocities consecutively ran along with the self inflicted wars to showcase superiority of race and then culminated into what came to be known as the cold war .By the end of the cold war the seeds of the next clash in the name of religion had already been sown, once again. The madness of  the cold war prompted the western Christian powers to prepare Islam as the last front for the annihilation of the communists. The western mindset of being logical and pragmatic in attainment of ends ,at least in hindsight, can be best described as shortsighted and perhaps suicidal in the rush to attain a...

NARENDRA MOD I Symbolism , Demonetization , Beef , Ram Mandir ,Black money, GST ,Gujarat Elections and the Reality Check The blog does not intend to be a political commentary and is merely based on some  Top of Mind recall of issues around Brand Modi as highlighted by an erstwhile hostile media and presently by spineless one. 8th November 2016 , while most of the urban India was busy struggling to wrap up the day's work and rural Bharat preparing for the next day, the prime minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi decided to act as a disruptor . It took couple  of hours to absorb the message and then all hell broke loose when people realized the cash in their hands was as good as a politicians promises during election campaigns . Demonetization would be next only to declaration of emergency or the wars with Pakistan and China which impacted everyone in the country irrespective of class, caste and religious affiliations.  There was no escaping o...

SWACHH BHARAT SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS SERIES 1:  OPEN DEFECATION http://india.gov.in/spotlight/ swachh-bharat-abhiyaan-ek-kadam-swachhata-ki-ore http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/ 2014-11-18/news/ 56222308_1_manual-scavengers-nhrc-issues-their-rehabilitation-act       FAD vs FACT (With due respects to images the intent is good but not sustainable) The idea of cleanliness and Hygiene, which westerners and their prototypes in India, think is alien to the psyche of the brown skinned Indians was somewhat jolted by the campaign of Swachh Bharat by Shri Narendra Modi.  There can be no doubt about the need of such wakeup call after demonstration of more than 60 years of democracy, a few Nuclear devices, a few wars, a few space missions and very recently (relatively) the economic strength, which pulls the same western or westernized brown people, irrespective of the stench of uncleanliness and lack of Hygiene, towards We the P...

The 2 minutes response to Hunger suffered a setback a few months back. Not getting into the reasons why it was banned at the first place and "unbanned" after a few months,  the decision to bring back the same has led to smiles on the millions who have secretly suffered from morbid dreams of having ingested what the laboratories termed as banned substances. The bachelors, the harried mothers,the lazy housekeeper or the urgently hungry seemed to have lost the art of living or more aptly the art of eating. Now the verdict is out that Maggi Noodles is no more harmful than the packets of Paan Masalahs or ciggarettes which mind you declare that we are harmful but are still not banned .Mothers who were probably suffering from  guilt pangs of having fed their children poison for so long have heaved a sigh of relief. All hill stations with Maggipoints which wore a deserted look and had converetd themselves to the boiled egg shops or worse, substituted Maggi with some of th...