Answering the question - What will my legacy be?

A few days back I was out till late night with a bunch of friends, looking for chicken roll for two of them. We finally located a roadside eatery where they began to chomp. The eatery had three child labourers, none over 14 years old, doing most of the cooking and serving. I wasn’t eating, so got busy mollycoddling a stray. He was cute and won’t stop leaping on to me and soiling my t-shirt with his paws.

I moved away a tad bit to keep the t-shirt clean and got busy chatting with friends. He hung back. In about another minute or two, I heard loud wailings. I turned to see that his left hind leg was curled up off the ground and he was limping away to the other side of the road as fast as a three-legged creature could. Why? Because one of the child cooks had hit him with a steel rod that was probably kept there just for that purpose.

I was morally outraged. Why hit an innocent creature who wasn’t even being intrusive? I ran towards the dog and saw that, despite the brutal intent of the assault, he’d escaped serious injuries and would soon be able to walk again. I turned back and unleashed my moral outrage against the child attacker - “Tumhe koi maarega faltu mein to kaisa lagega?”, and variants of it.

The guy was unfazed. Completely. In previous similar experiences, I had seen the guilty at least murmur justifications. This kid didn’t even bother with that, just kept looking down at the plate he was garnishing. I got my friends to pay up quickly and soon left the place in disgust, reacting typically like a morally outraged person would.

After physically abandoning the crime scene, the next step for a morally outraged person is to abandon it mentally, too.  I was in the process of blocking out horrific memories of the wailing dog and the stoic child, when I was reminded of something the inimitable Manu Joseph said – “If you’re morally outraged by something, get closer to it.”

Given that going back to the child and digging calmly into his reasons behind committing the act would most likely have proved futile, I chose the next best option - trying to figure out why a human being, a child no less, would do such an inexcusable thing.

The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind. All these evils are a direct consequence of population explosion. We’re breeding like maggots and there are not enough carcasses to feed on. Why is unprovoked physical violence an abhorrence for you and I, but not for a teenager who’s had no education and probably sleeps on a half-empty stomach every night? Well, for one, you and I need to realise that what we think of as innate is often a byproduct of the environment one grows up in. A child who grows up watching his alcoholic father grab his sister’s ass and beat up his mom without reason, is often thrashed by his employer, must steal food and learn to land blows to survive on a daily basis, can hardly be expected to empathise with an animal. Physical violence, for this child, is either a way to vent his bitterness or a survival mechanism.

All those mob lynching incidents that we hear of these days? Sure, to an extent the spurt could be explained by the present circumstances, but never underestimate the fury of a group of people who’re underfed and underpaid. For them, it doesn’t take much of a leap to go from cobbling street dogs to lynching humans, especially if they’re paid for it.

That largely explains the depravity of the deprived. So, if the poor clamped down on producing more like them, surely the world would be a better place?

Hardly.

As white-collar crimes by Ivy League graduates, sexual exploitation by the powerful, female foeticide and infanticide by educated and urban Indians, and money laundering by chartered accountants suggest, physical violence is perhaps the least destructive form of depravity that has come to characterize human beings. The educated avoid physical violence simply because they don’t need it for survival and they have too much to lose by engaging in wanton violence. They channel their depravity into ugliness that’s more rewarding and easier to hide. The wealthy and the uneducated, however, don’t have similar inhibitions about it. Salman Khan and the Gujjar community are living examples.

In short, it’s pretty clear that making the poor educated and/or rich, or reducing their numbers, isn’t going to change anything, except probably making things worse.

To get rid of the problem permanently, I propose a radical solution – VHEMT. Started in 1991 by American environmental activist Les Knight, VHEMT stands for Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.  As its motto - “May we live long and die out” – suggests, VHEMT calls for all humans to stop having kids, so that the human race is wiped out for good within a generation. There’s no violence, no suicide involved. We just have to stop making more of us.

Many would argue that adherents to VHEMT are a bunch of misanthropes. Except for a few like me, that’s not really true. Most of these guys can be perfectly described by Lord Byron’s “I love not Man the less, but Nature more”. VHEMT guys believe, and rightly so, that a planet sans humans would mean its biosphere can revive and restore to its former glory again.

This makes perfect sense for the climate change radicals as well as for the hedonists who don’t care about the environment. For the former, not producing another resource-sucking creature would mean they’re doing their utmost to save the planet. For the latter, there’s a more subtle reason to adhere to VHEMT. If the entire human race decided to eschew kids, it would give us a guilt-free passport to the planet’s loot and plunder for as long as we live - not more than 125 years. So we could fire up all those coal plants again, shelve the boring EVs once and for all, and extract oil without worrying about ‘peak oil’. Once we’re gone, the planet will heal itself in due course. There are other less obvious benefits of VHEMT. College admissions would become easier. There’ll be more food for humans and stray dogs. No longer would women drop behind in the workplace due to pregnancy-induced leaves. Divorce settlements would be much less messy. The pro-choice vs. pro-life debate would end instantly. Above all, the most vexing question invented by humankind – what will my legacy be? – would become redundant.

If we can’t go as far as VHEMT, let’s begin by celebrating those who’ve already embraced this movement. For every Father’s Day, let’s have a Not-a-Father’s Day. For every Mother’s Day, let’s have a Not-a-Mother’s Day. For every Children’s Day, let’s have a Children-Never-Born’s Day. In place of the bygone “Hum Do Hamare Do”, let’s make a brand new start with the ambitious “Hum Do Hamare No”.

Review - Manu Joseph's latest book 'Miss Laila, Armed and Dangerous'

There are two Manu Josephs. One, Manu the author. Two, Manu the journalist. The first is an inspiration while the second is a warning. In his previous two books, Manu the journalist took a backseat and Manu the author – capable of staining the blank page with timeless wisdoms - shone through. In this book, however, exactly the opposite has happened.

First and foremost, this book should be deprived of its “fiction” tag. The only fictional element here is the lame stage names given to really well known, real-life public figures. This book is essentially an extended, heavily biased, opinion piece laying out the author’s thoughts on a particular case that rocked India over a decade back, and continues to emit aftershocks. Although I will avoid spoilers, anyone with a fair command on current affairs will be able to guess the real-life equivalents of the book’s characters and its plot, just a few pages into it.

The book’s best part – the author’s quintessential, though grossly generalizing, barbs against human rights activists – also turns out to be its most ironic. In presenting a completely one-sided view of important real-life events and the people involved in it, while ignoring all evidence to the contrary, Manu exposes himself as an activist, and perhaps a cowardly one at that, for his activism hides in the garb of fiction. I should mention here that asking tough questions is the job of a journalist, but asking them in a way so as to turn public opinion favourable to one’s own is not only irresponsible, but also dangerous. But then, as I said, Manu the journalist is a warning.

Of course, not everything about the book is bad. Like his previous works, this book has Manu’s signatures – underdog male characters, strong female characters, and of course, timeless wisdoms. Although the beginning seems jagged due to one too many interjections by the author’s voice, it soon picks up pace and reads like a thriller. It’s a given that the enjoyment readers gets out of this book will be directly proportional to their ignorance about the goings-on of the world. The plot twist towards the end is admirable, too.

I’ll leave you with some gems that only Manu is capable of writing:

“Hope is a premonition of defeat”

“There is no evidence of Damodarbhai’s guilt except one. Hindus adore him and they can’t explain why.”

“Damodarbhai is not right, Damodarbhai is not wrong. He is a secret thought that people have already thought.”

“You can defame love by calling it madness, which only confirms its existence.”

One of the character’s response when his daughter asks him why he doesn’t leave India when he dislikes it so much - “India is a wound. But it is not a wound like a whiplash. It is a wound, like a spouse.”

“Sweetheart, I’ll always be yours because no one else might want me or I might be too frightened to stray, for that is what faithful men are, unwanted or cowards.”

Wait, I forgot to ask the most important question. Considering the entire book is based on true events, what if that man turns out real, too? If he does, I will go back the very day and change this review, as well as my thoughts on Manu the journalist.

Satire - Marital rape from a Bharatiya POV

All this silly outrage over the government trying to preserve the right to marital rape. Don’t all these feminist libtards get it? By defending marital rape, the government isn’t just protecting the “institution of marriage”, it is protecting something much bigger – the very future of this country. Let me explain how.

Bharat is a nation of sanskari men, where a majority of men observe strict celibacy before marriage. They don’t succumb to the Western sins of attempting to woo girls to date. The only exception is a minority who sometimes force their hands into the tee shirt of an unsuspecting girl who agrees to venture into a desolate park with them. She makes some noises but usually not those that indicate trouble. If she does no one really cares, including the top-button-loose khaki-clad protectors of the people. Because everyone supports the men, they must be right. If you think they’re not, remember what our dear Netaji said, “boys commit mistakes, will you hang them?”

Given his preoccupation with being sanskari, Bhartiya nar leaves the job of finding a girl for him to his parents, before he dies of sexual frustration. Have you seen the “V” sign proudly brandished by a Bhartiya nar’s friends at his wedding? That’s they celebrating his overdue loss of virginity. V= Victory = Virginity (lost). Once the marriage is done, he loses little time in claiming this much deserved victory. After all, if the girl in the park didn’t complain, why should the wife? Obviously, once she’s sitting all decked up in the bed, she is craving relief from the 50kg lehenga that’s about to bury her in the ground. That, combined with the glass of milk (or perhaps Red Bull these days, given India’s embrace of modernity) - can you really blame it on the men? Silly Ajay Devgun, backed out despite Aishwarya’s kinky pallu-ripping invitation in Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam.

Sometimes we hear an incident or two of wives complaining that their husbands raped them. Those insolent ones get thrashed even by their parents. If the girls’ parents support the husbands, they ought to be right. If you’re in doubt, remember what Netaji said.

At the heart of marital rape lies another underappreciated reason – Indian men’s love for their wives. Denial of sex is a ground for divorce. Some Indian men love their wives far too much to divorce them, so they don’t let them deny sex. In any case, only 10-20% of the wives get raped. That’s just a few crores. Big deal.

So, do you now understand why marital rape – a perfectly justified activity as explained above – is also essential to the future of this country? It’s the kids, stupid! For a lot of sanskari Indian men who assiduously shield themselves from the Western notions of romance and consent, the right to rape make love to their wives is essential to the continuation of progeny, and thus to sustain the fast-dwindling population of India.

However, our sanskari government didn’t stop at this. It presented still more arguments to convince people of the necessity of marital rape. One of those is that, “This country has its own unique problems due to various factors like literacy, lack of financial empowerment of the majority of females… and these should be considered carefully before criminalising marital rape”. Now, the government understands these aren’t “problems” at all, but crucial to the continuation of the institution of marriage – after all, Westernization of women through education and empowerment makes their rape by sanskari husbands unlikely. Criminalizing marital rape would be a big step towards empowering women, hence it must be avoided.

Another brilliant argument is, “What may appear to be marital rape to an individual wife, it may not appear so to others.” Assuming the government isn’t talking about eyesight, it’s right in saying that women who get raped by their husbands are too dumb to figure it out for themselves. Estrogen, you see. Here they are on common ground with another women’s rights champion, All India Muslim Personal Board (AIMPLB). While defending triple talaq, AIMPLB said that it should be preserved because men have greater decision-making power than women. Such nouveau wisdom!

Lastly, the government rightly touches upon the misuse of Sec 498A to punish innocent husbands for domestic violence they didn’t commit, fearing that a law against marital rape will be similarly misused. This argument is based on careful analysis of data from countries – US, UK, Nepal, Bhutan etc. – where laws against marital rape have forced all husbands to flee to India, where men are still allowed to be men. Added to this is the government’s concern over how to prove marital rape. It’s saddening that this concern hasn’t been extended to non-marital relationships, where proving marital rape can be equally hard. This presents us with a golden chance to revoke anti-rape laws for boyfriends too. After all, why ruin a brewing marriage? And boyfriends never rape anyway, their girlfriends just invite it, so there’s little use of keeping a redundant law.

While we’re on the subject of revoking laws, let’s also revoke Sec 498A, the biggest threat to the institution of marriage. India has deftly avoided making a law to protect male victims of domestic violence, and now needs to correct its folly of trying to protect women. If women can undergo rape, what’s the harm in taking a few beatings at the hands of pati parmeshwar? And all those reports of burnings for not paying dowry are #FakeNews about kitchen accidents by presstitutes.

Let’s all be thankful to our sanskari government and Bhartiya nar for fighting tooth and nail to shield our great nation from existential Western attacks. Together, they shall defend our superior civilizational ethos and keep evil notions of romance and consent at bay.

Dunkirk: Nolan walks further down the wrong path

In Dunkirk, Nolan falls for the same trap that ensnared him in Interstellar – that Zimmerman’s background score is a substitute for dialogues, and cinematographic grandeur, confounding nonlinearity and Bollywood-like heroism are substitutes for good old character development. In cinema, dialogue and character development still make for the compass, and technological shenanigans only for the oars. Clearly, Nolan’s beliefs have changed since the days of Following, Memento, The Prestige and The Dark Knight. While Dunkirk thankfully stops short of Interstellar’s meme-worthy sappiness and grandeur, it does have fuel-less planes shooting potent adversaries out of the sky. If grandeur and victory of good over evil were the criteria, only the hypocritical would admire Dunkirk while trashing Bahubali.

Besides the notion that it’s Nolan’s best work, the biggest misconception about Dunkirk is that it’s a war movie. That’s wrong for two reasons – Dunkirk doesn’t focus on war beyond its facade of guns and warplanes, and moreover, it’s hardly a movie. A movie is an on-screen narrative that begins at one point and ends at another – and sometimes at the same in case of gems such as Pulp Fiction - passing through several points during the course of its journey. Dunkirk eschews all attempts at a narrative. It just teeters at one spot like a drunkard. Wonder whether D(r)unkirk would be a more fitting name. In mathematical parlance, Dunkirk is not a flow but a stock; a stock of numerous, unconnected images that run past the viewer’s eyes in Nolan’s signature, though now tiresome, nonlinear fashion one after the other, with a very predictable attempt at the end to link them all together.

Dunkirk begins coherently by focusing on one desperate soldier, a Frenchman, who violates orders to join ranks with the fleeing British army. Except for the non-sequitur, awkward shot of the man taking a dump on the beach, one would think fleshing out this narrative would have made for a great movie, bringing out the travails of soldiers trapped in a merciless war. Sadly, it soon collapses into multiple threads – a dog fight, a bunch of British civilians ferrying to Dunkirk to take back their soldiers, and the original one of the French soldier – each of which is reduced to nothing but the stock of images referred above.

Sure, some of these images are worth gaping at, and to those who are easily impressed, Nolan will remain the most useful investment of their movie budget. The scene depicting a German bomber’s attack on a British minesweeper ship, and another of soldiers trapped underwater while the surface is set ablaze by oil, are some of the greatest sensory treats ever. Certain others – one, a soldier killing himself by sailing into the waves, and two, hundreds of British civilian boats reaching the shores of Dunkirk in a heart-swelling display of true patriotism - could have been made much more powerful but feel half-baked due to Nolan’s rush to distort time and replace individuals with larger-than-life, mind-boggling events. For the most part, Zimmerman’s persistently edge-of-the-seat background score also seems out of sync with what happens on screen.

In all fairness though, Nolan must be commended for historical accuracy – the Stucka dive bomber makes its characteristic whistling noise while diving down, and original models of warships and planes have been used wherever possible. The only noticeable departure from real events is the yellow-coloured nose of the German planes (in reality, this happened after Dunkirk evacuation was over), though that was done only to allow clear distinction for the viewer. Unfortunately though, such eye for detail is lost on all but the WWII-obsessed viewers.

In Dunkirk, Nolan has come a long way from his initial days of making tiny movies focused on a handful of characters. There are fighter planes, naval destroyers, U-boats, and phantasmagoric imagery. Sadly, all this has come at the expense of characters. I miss the Nolan of yore.

Men are finished

A few weeks back I watched an online debate on the topic “Men are finished”. It’s interesting that we’re having this debate at all. After all, men still overwhelmingly dominate politics, science, sports, even restaurant kitchens. Naturally, I dismissed the motion as absurd.

I was wrong.

Lately, I spent eight consecutive days trekking in the Himalayas with twenty strangers, sans internet. 15 of those strangers were men. This was one of the few times when I was forced to flock with birds of another feather. And man, of an entirely different feather they were.

While I am all for female equality and for shattering the glass ceiling imposed largely by men, I will never understand the “pride in being led by women”, as a friend described the situation where two women were walking ahead of the men. I will also never understand why a guy would spontaneously break into garba (which autocorrects to garbage) surrounded only by men in the middle of a cold night, and not spare them of even the gayest of its moves. Again, why would a guy dismiss as “a bit harsh” my confronting possibly the worst trek leader on planet earth, and give him the “benefit of doubt”, or, for that matter, be content with sipping watery tea simply because it’s “something warm” (why not drink piss instead)?

I have written extensively about the perils of political correctness, but this trip was an eye-opener even for me. The sample size should suffice, for all but one man behaved in this manner, and they belonged to varied socio-economic, demographic and geographic backgrounds. The younger the lot, the stronger the grip of PC. The stronger the grip of PC, the more emasculated the men. I suspect it also has something to do with the income group. As Manu Joseph put it in his novel Serious Men, “These days, men live like men only in the homes of the poor”. There’s no shame in being sensitive and living in a world where women do better, but there’s no pride in not calling a spade a spade and inviting subordination.

Men are not yet finished, but the process is underway. We won’t lose our dicks, but we’ll lose our defining traits.

The photo below captures what I want to say.

A letter to Trinity

Dear Trinity,

I couldn’t utter a word for a full minute after papa informed me on the phone that you were gone. He couldn’t say much either, except that you were no more. I knew you were on the brink when I saw you last. But I could only break my silence with a quivering ‘how come?’

In those thirteen years, we transitioned together – me, from adolescence to adulthood; you, from infancy to dust. In one lifetime, I could outlive you seven times. Boon or bane?

I never told you this and you never asked, but your name, Trinity, was inspired by The Matrix. There was considerable opposition to it since people thought it would be tough for you to grasp, but they were wrong. You leapt all the way up to my face, sometimes even defeating my maneuvers to evade your prying tongue, whenever I called out to you. I wonder where you got all that energy from, for you were always wafer thin. While you were not stupendous at spotting the ball once it was lost (remember how you made me do the fetching every time that happened?), that nose of yours sure did a great job of picking out the well-camouflaged pieces of chicken in your big bowl of food, and leaving the rest behind. You’re probably unaware of the joke, but after all our attempts to make you eat failed, we blamed it on your figure-consciousness. Was there an element of truth to that? I hope not, because you’d grown terribly weak in later years.

You were thin, yes, but none could question your agility and speed. Hey, you often outran the much stronger Alex when the three of us played fetch-the-ball! Wait, did you ever stop to consider that he let you win? Ok, maybe not always. But he did love you too much to see you lose too often, and this despite the fact that you were always more curious about the contents in his bowl of food than your own. After all, you gave birth to the only offspring he ever had, nine of them, all in one go. It’s a good thing you weren’t human, for they often give up on their wives if they birth all daughters. I think you were far too dazed to notice that I pulled each one of your kids out of your body with my own hands. Rather messy day, that. I hope you never got to know that one of them didn’t survive. Don’t worry, we gave her an honourable burial in the park right in front of the house. Yes yes, that same park, of which you once chased out an unsuspecting stray while I was giving you a walk. Poor guy, why were you so disapproving of others of your kind? Coming back, I want to apologise to you for keeping you confined to that little room where you gave birth, for nearly two months. I could see you wanting to escape as the eight crawlers went all milky way on you, but I had little choice. But hey, as a one year old mother, you did a great job. The sad bit is that it made sure you stayed thin all your life.

Trinity (foreground) getting curious about Alex's bowl

You were about six weeks old when Papa and I brought you home, in 2004. You might be surprised to know that unlike your kind, humans carefully pick and choose the recipient(s) of their affection. It’s natural that you feel disappointed in me for not recalling precisely why I picked you from a large group, but I did like the way you circled around my feet and licked them.

Do you remember your first meeting with Alex, the four year old big guy already at home, when we let your nose and his do the talking from across the net door that you later tore apart? That was because we were terribly afraid of what he would do to you, only we were fearing for the wrong dog. Soon you were making us run after you, trying to stop you from jumping up to bite his nose, placed about two feet higher than your mouth.

Gosh, you never let that pattern reverse for the next eight years you and Alex were together, did you? And you didn’t even need to jump to bite him after the first few months. I can probably understand the fun in dominating one’s partner, but why did you get so jealous at his being called ‘good dog’ or being patted on the head? Intervening forcefully to divert attention towards yourself to steal the mantle of ‘good dog’ wasn’t the best strategy, you know. Poor guy, except visibly seeking solitude at times, he loved you too much to complain. Despite everything, I know you did too, for you never recovered from the shock of his death on March 9, 2012.

Trinity refusing to let go of the ball, as always

Trinity (left) and Alex (right); Trinity is the one being chided but it's Alex who seems sorry as she wags her tail

The two of you made for an odd couple. While he was ferocious and uncouth - his love for sampling human blood of varying delights and the habit of making a show of nature’s calls, put us through considerable heartburn and embarrassment - you never bit a soul and your cat-like discretion in potty matters was often admired by the three homo sapiens in the family during secretive, closed-door deliberations about the two of you (whenever we found out you were eavesdropping we changed the subject to stop you from gloating about it to Alex). We never did figure out, however, the switching of personalities between the two of you when it came to animals. While Alex floundered with the mice in the kitchen, you made sure the cheese always stayed protected. Mummy confirms that in the court of mice, you would be tried for over 100 brutal murders. But hey, I am not scared for you because I know you’d kill them all before they could sentence you. 

Know the reason why I preferred playing fetch-the-ball with Alex? Because while he let go of the ball as soon as he got back to me after fetching it, the only way of making you do so was to poke a finger in your ear. Also, even as he saluted every time he was asked to do so, why did you simply collapse on the ground and play dead?!

             Alex, on being asked to salute

Trinity, on being asked to do the same

And of course, of course you know damn well what your homo sapiens remember you most for - that incessant, inexplicable wailing which was the most endearing, irritating and confusing thing about you all at once. I know it was your love for us that made you whip up a storm of cries as soon as you were left alone, but sometimes, waking up your homo sapiens groggy-eyed in the middle of the night doesn’t exactly win you their love, you know. Are you even aware of the flak I got from mummy-papa for letting you lick my face, my bribe for shutting you up?

I hope you realise that the only time papa raised his hand on you, towards the end of your life, was a desperate attempt to stop you from waking up the neighbours. He deeply regrets it now, realising that the terminal decline and paralysis you struggled with in your later years had increased your craving for us. The only thing he regrets more is that none of your three homo sapiens was around you in your final moments, to hold you tight as your breathing slowed on the night of May 23. We could never think about putting you to sleep, but papa said, and I agreed, that what happened was for the best. He wondered whether you’d have fought to live longer had someone been around. That broke my heart, the last I saw you was on April 16. If it’s any consolation, we did sit beside you after you were gone. Although I don’t believe that the dead look down, if it’s true, I hope it made you wag your tail. And if there’s really a world for the dead, that ball we buried alongside you will make sure you, Alex and I have something to keep ourselves busy with, when I join the two of you there.

Trinity’s resting place

It took your death, Trinity, more than five years after Alex’s, for me to muster the courage to have another look at the captured moments of either of you. It’s true what they say about a man with nothing to lose - with your departure, the ‘Alex-Trinity’ era of my home, my family and my life is well and truly over. While I was unable to take another look at Alex’s motionless body lying in the veranda on the morning of his death, I spent considerable time next to yours, caressing you. To borrow a line from my favourite TV series, loving the two of you has been the most profound, intense and painful experience of my life, almost too much to bear. 

Each day I died a bit thinking you'd leave me behind, and now that you have, I feel liberated. The only thing that scares me is that, with my death, your memories will be gone forever too. Hopefully this tiny space will prove me wrong even far in the future, as someone, somewhere will keep stumbling upon it.

Yours,

Whatever you called me

Rekindling My Love for Shooting

For non-contraband civilian folk who didn’t have the pleasure of being born in US of A, laying hands upon guns is usually the stuff of dreams, rarely ever realised. Since obtaining a license in India is near-impossible, getting experience with shooting usually requires engagement with state authorities such as the police/army, and man, which middle class Indian wants that?!

Thanks to my current job, I am one of the state authorities. Albeit strictly civilian, I do get chances to interact with the police. Last week, during a conversation with a senior police officer, the subject of Indian police’s prowess in shooting came up. Whenever the topic of shooting is broached, I rarely forget to boast about the .22 rifle district-level championship I won as a kid. This time, though, neither was the topic changed nor the eyes rolled. Instead, I was extended an offer to rekindle my love for shooting at a police firing range.

I was there the very next morning. The office accompanying me boasted about the array of arsenal being used for training that day - pistols and revolvers, carbines, AK-47s, Self-Loading Rifle (SLR), British-era 3NOT3 rifles, and Light Machine Guns (LMGs). I was in disbelief at the mention of that last weapon - LMGs and pot bellies go together only in writing.

To prove me wrong, he took me to the sight where the guns were carefully lined up next to one another. Indeed, the LMG was there. None of the guns was loaded, but next to each lay its bullets. The bullets of the British-era 3NOT3 were perhaps longer than even those of the LMG. Though I’ve fired revolvers previously, they seemed tiny to me, almost innocuous. The myth was quickly dispelled on being informed that a single shot could burst open two skulls lined up one behind the other, from a 50 metre range. With the officer’s permission, I picked up each and every gun, and found out that the LMG is not so L, after all.

From about 100 metres away, the roar of LMGs and the crackling sounds of other guns rang in my ears. Guns of different types going off one after the other lent the range the aura of a mini battlefield. The air was heavy with the smell of gunpowder and hot iron. The adrenaline was running thick, yes, but I’d be lying if I denied the unmistakable trepidation within.

I first took a crack at the now-obsolete 3NOT3. After a brief demo, I loaded a single bullet, locked it by pushing the lever ahead, placed my slightly shaky left hand firmly under the barrel, secured the butt of the rifle on my right shoulder, shut the left eye and looked at the target with the right keeping it in line with the two little pointers on the gun, and placed the index finger of the right hand lightly on the trigger. Then, I steadied my breath – it’s necessary to hit the target. I felt a jolt on my right shoulder. Before I could open my left eye, I saw a puff of dust rise up behind the target. The bullet had covered the more than 200 metre distance before my ear could register the first of the many deafening shots that would soon numb it. The butterflies had died down. I smelt gunpowder from so up close after really long. I liked it. After 15 shots with the 3NOT3, I checked the target. For someone shooting after well over a decade, I’d done reasonably well. My left hand was in considerable pain and I could hear almost nothing, not even the LMGs in the vicinity. No wonder the weight of the rifle and the time taken to load each bullet have rendered it useless, except, of course, for Indian police.

I moved on to the revolver, the carbine, and soon on to the Kalashnikov. Though I didn’t get a crack at the LMG, the AK was a different experience altogether. It is extremely lightweight and maneuverable, almost like a toy, yet gives a feeling far more manly than the 3NOT3, SLR, carbine, or the revolver. Not for nothing is it the most lethal weapon on the planet - the weapon of choice for many armies and almost all terrorists. I shot several rounds in the semi-automatic/repeat fire mode, wherein each squeeze of the trigger dispatches a solitary messenger of death. Finally, I shot 5 rounds in the automatic/burst mode, the one used for mass killings. Firing 5 bullets with a single squeeze was exhilarating and much easier than I’d imagined, and I wanted to go for a higher number, but was denied permission. I have no regrets whatsoever. Shooting an AK-47 is perhaps best compared to making love to a beautiful woman, for the touch, smell and sound of both intoxicate a man like nothing else can.

While shooting the AK - the only photo of me at the range, and the right one. The policeman is trying to prevent the shells from going astray

The insignia of rifle butts on my right shoulder

While walking off the range, the AK in my hand, I spotted some animals, mainly cows, far away. They looked tiny. For a fleeting second I thought – could my Kalashnikov get to them? Given my love for animals, it was a scary thought. Surely, it wasn’t entirely voluntary. No wonder little children can be made to kill with this beautiful beast.

I think I have a few trips to the range lined up.

Review of Jon Krakauer's Under The Banner of Heaven

Originally written for Goodreads, reproduced below:

I’d have easily given it 5, had it been Krakauer’s first novel I read. But that happened to be Into Thin Air – one of the few truly deserving of 5 stars - so this one has to settle for 4, owing largely to tedious details of the history of Mormonism that could have been easily avoided.

The book starts off with an electric shock to the brains of those who consider US as the last bastion of law and order in modern times. The Fundamentalist Mormon theocracies that dominate parts of Northwestern US and Canada are perhaps worse than Saudi Arabia, where women are treated as sex slaves, underage marriages and polygamy are rampant, and asking questions is a heresy.

But the book is far from a mere crime thriller, or a critique of Fundamentalist Mormonism for that matter. It's a brilliant, wholesome commentary on the nature of religion itself.

In the postscript, Krakauer says, “those who write about religion owe it to their readers to come clean about their own theological frame of reference”, so here’s mine – I am an atheist, and I firmly believe all religions are basically tools of mind control to allow its founders/leaders to exercise unencumbered authority over their followers.

Now that I have confessed to my confirmation bias, I will go ahead with the main bit of the review.

Reading about the mindless horrors committed by Lafferty Brothers – the near-decapitation of a young mother and her 15 month old daughter - at apparently the commandment of god, it’s natural to presume they were nothing but two mentally deranged individuals whose crime should be treated similar to that of another psychopathic murderer, without maligning Mormonism, or any other religion, on its pretext.

However, like a great music composition, this book reaches its crescendo towards the very end, when it establishes conclusively – by going into painstaking details of the trials of Lafferty Brothers – that these were two otherwise perfectly sane individuals who suffered from unwavering faith in their religion and the infallibility of their own actions. More worryingly, by deftly weaving together the story of Lafferty Brothers and that of the founders of Mormonism, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, the readers are informed that the brothers shared these traits with the two founders, and derived complete justification for their most heinous actions from them. Such justification, given the call for “blood atonement” given by the founders as well as their complete disregard for laws of man in favour of laws of god, is only logical.

Perhaps Fundamentalist Mormonism is especially bad - its stalwarts rape their own minor daughters and take tens of wives - but an intelligent reader should be able to make the leap from the story of Lafferty Brothers to religion in general, and from Smith and Young to founders of all religions – ultimately, all religions are forms of mind control and all founders were deeply narcissistic individuals who were undoubtedly virtuous in some ways but, “at need a great liar and a great scoundrel” (words, not used by Krakauer, to describe Young) who were not afraid to lie, maim, kill and rape to establish their version of truth as the only valid one. At the risk of being labelled a bigot, I’d say this is most true of Abrahamic religions and their founders. In their narcissism, the founders of religions shared a trait also found in Hitler, Osama, Caesar, Napoleon, and indeed al-Baghdadi (founder of ISIS) – all great leaders cum murderers in history.

The unfortunate bit is that the control of religion over human psyche, despite millennia of scientific progress, has hardly loosened. If there was Joseph Smith then, there is Donald Trump now – an example of an individual who suffers from the same unabashed narcissism and an entrenched sense of infallibility. If Smith was a prophet, Trump is a demigod. The names change, the cycle perpetuates. Animal Farm isn’t one of the best books ever for no reason.

In Into Thin Air, Krakauer erred in blaming Boukreev for loss of lives, so I was open to reading logical rebuttals to this book by Mormons. Sadly, as expected, they consist of nothing but ad hominem attacks on the author, and laughable reiterations of their belief in Mormonism being the “one true faith”. If anything, they only strengthen my belief in the evil inherent to religion.  

The Doors

At the beginning, it was a big room full of people. My school friends, colony friends, and cousins, lots of cousins. Those in the room were mostly my age, though I could spot my elder cousins too. And oh, mummy-papa. They were always around.

Most people in the room were chatty and sociable. Not all of them talked among each other, but almost everyone talked with me. I liked it. I was too busy with friends and cousins to spend much time with mummy-papa, though from the corner of my eye I always saw them smiling beatifically at me. Only a very few people, along the fringes of the room, didn’t talk to me, though some of them did talk to mummy-papa. I didn’t care much about those people.

Everyone in the room always walked, usually in a straight line. I didn’t mind it because I walked with them. Sometimes I would pause to spend time with some of them; they would pause too, but we found ourselves walking again, I had no clue why.

Every now and then I came upon a closed door. I was apprehensive of opening it, but found myself opening it anyway, I had no clue why. Walking through a door meant entering a new, though similar, room. It wasn’t so bad because most of the people around me walked through the same door that I did, so we kept seeing each other in the new room. Some people, though, did not. In case they walked through a different door, I never saw them again, I had no clue why. This usually happened with my school friends. My cousins and mummy-papa always queued up behind me to walk through the same door.

Sometimes after walking through a door, I saw unknown faces entering the new room through other doors that opened into it. Then, the unknown faces walked with me - they also became school friends. I liked it.

One day, I noticed someone who had been walking with me since the beginning was missing. I turned around and ran to the door I had come through to go back to the previous room. Maybe he was languishing at the end of the queue, and someone had shut the door. I tried really hard but the door never unlocked, I had no clue why. Soon, I found myself walking towards the next room.

After walking through hundreds of doors, I came upon another. As was usual, I waited for others to queue up behind me. But no one did. I looked around and saw everyone standing against a door of their own. Each and every one. I had no clue why. I tried really hard to not open the door, but found myself opening it anyway, I had no clue why.

Opening this door put me in an unusually big room. I saw uncountable new faces walking into it through still more uncountable doors. I looked around but I could see none of the old faces, only the new ones. I was scared. I ran back to the door and saw mummy-papa standing there. They were not walking with me but their presence in the same room was comforting. Somehow they’d managed to sneak in through the door when I was urging my friends and cousins to do so, which they never did. I hugged mummy-papa tight and asked them about others. They said every one of them had entered an unusually big room of their own, called college. I wondered why they didn’t walk into my room, it was big enough to accommodate them. I didn’t try unlocking the door because I knew it wouldn’t yield.

Some of the new people in this unusually big room soon became chatty and sociable - they became college friends. I liked it. The new big room was also likeable because there were no doors to walk through here. There was a lot of walking alright, but sans doors. My favourite faces were always visible, walking with me. Sometimes some of them turned less chatty, but they kept walking with me. The dreaded memory of walking through the last door was now distant.

While walking through this big room I was also bombarded with a host of old faces that had gone missing a long time back. They entered through blue-coloured “f”-shaped doors. I never cared much about them.

The best part about the new room was the discovery of hidden doors that lay off the walking path. Passing through them allowed me to enter another, smaller room where some of my old favourite faces became visible again. This place had a nice smell, I called it home. They told me they’d found secret doors in unusually big rooms of their own.

Mummy-papa were the only ones present in both the rooms, though I talked much more with them in the smaller one. Out there in the bigger one, I only saw them from the corner of my eye – smiling beatifically at me, as always. I sometimes wanted to spend more time in the smaller room, but I found myself walking back to the door that opened into the bigger room, I had no clue why. With time, however, I discovered that some of the old faces in the smaller room had become blurred or invisible, I had no clue why.

One day, my long walk in the big room was abruptly interrupted by a door. Trying to keep out memories of the previous door, I shut my eyes and desperately hoped for others to queue up behind me. But no one did. I looked around and saw everyone standing against a door of their own. Each and every one. For the first time, I had a clue why. Then, mummy-papa quietly queued up behind me. This time, I didn’t let them go unnoticed. Only they walked through this door with me, no one else. Not even one.

The new room that I walked into was much smaller than the previous one. I knew no one here and far fewer unknown faces entered it. It smelt bad, I called it workplace. Some of them were good, but it wasn’t the same as any of the previous rooms. I didn’t like it. To my delight I found that hidden doors to home still existed, but it was much harder to walk through them, and the faces on the other side had become ever more blurred and diminished.

I continue to walk through doors, or more accurately, somnambulate through them, for there’s hardly a familiar face to be left behind anymore. Well, mummy-papa are still around, but their presence grows stronger and clearer by the day.

I do secretly wish, though, for a really long walk in the opposite direction.

Animal Euthanasia - Mercy or Murder?

I signed a death warrant today. My first. She was barely a month old.

She was the feeblest of the six siblings born in my office premises. For the past few days, I’d been feeding her milk and bread. The results had been encouraging. Her bulging, big black eyes no more threatened to pop out of their socket. She had grown increasingly competitive against the siblings for her mother’s milk. Her gait had progressed from tottering to walking on the cobble path where she was born. In short, she’d gone from looking like a genetically-altered mouse gone wrong, to a real puppy. The increased pace of walking meant I had to often run after her to protect her from the vehicles passing by. I didn’t mind doing it, though; those tiny paws never took her far and her lighter-than-feather, mud-stained white body fitted in the length of my palm. The wagging of the thin, short tail whenever I picked her up was an added incentive.

Today I found her on the cobble path - prostrate on her right side, shaking uncontrollably. Her big eyes were shut tight and there were yellow white stains on the mouth, probably from dried up vomit and froth. A guy sitting nearby said nonchalantly that he’d been observing her in that state for over half an hour – “kisi ne gaadi chadha di hogi.” But I knew she hadn’t been run over. She wasn’t squealing at all and there were no injury marks.

In the car, she kept sneaking underneath the seat where I sat. At the hospital I had to drag her out by the tail when the lure of biscuits and a pat on the head proved futile. This time, though, the tail didn’t wag as she remained motionless in my arms. Once inside the hospital, her movements were completely incoherent – she was crouching, darting backwards more than forwards, and falling over repeatedly. The only moment of sanity was when she snuck into the V made by my shoes while I was standing, speaking to the doctor. I have a picture of the moment, but I will avoid putting it here.

The doctor said she didn’t have more than a week to live. It would be a gruesome death. Uncontrollable seizures, incoherent actions, and frothing at the mouth were symptoms of the last stage of distemper – a brutal canine killer.

The doctor and I agreed that euthanasia was the best option. Taking her back would infect the entire family. Leaving her anywhere else would mean death, either from the disease, or from causes ranging from starvation to a mauling by other dogs.

As a last ditch attempt to keep her alive, I took her to a dog-friendly NGO. But they refused to keep her because she would infect every other dog they had. Had she been human she’d have felt pretty unwanted right about then. Maybe she felt it anyway.

They brought a piece of paper with the words “PTS” scribbled on it, and asked for my consent, so that she could be Put To Sleep. That’s when I signed her death warrant.

To be honest, it turned out far easier for me than I imagined. Her condition checked all the boxes that justify euthanasia. Immeasurable suffering – check; imminent death – check; absence of caretakers – check.

In retrospect, it wasn’t. If it were, I’d have held her in my arms till her very last moment, making her feel wanted – to the extent possible – as humans killed her without her knowledge. I would have been there to calm her down as she flinched for the last time at the feeling of something sharp poking her. I didn’t do that. Instead, I left her to her fate after signing her death warrant. Being by her side would have been too much to bear, though I did stress upon them, twice, that she be given a painless death.

That humans treat non-humans as inferior comes as no surprise, but to think human euthanasia is allowed in very few jurisdictions - strictly with prior consent of the patient, except in the rarest of rare cases - while animal euthanasia is rampant in every corner of the world must be disturbing at least to some. The reasoning is that since animals, or their families, can’t give consent – at least not in the form humans would understand – we should choose on their behalf given our higher intelligence.

The above reasoning is on morally shaky ground, for it neglects the fact that animals can’t consent because they simply won’t consent - for lack of intelligence or otherwise – to being killed. They would much rather rot to death than kill themselves. This is apparent from the fact that animals never commit suicide, or kill one of their own in deep suffering. Whatever little evidence exists in favour of this is far from conclusive. Humans, on the other hand, commit suicide by the lakhs every year. So, while humans might want to end their lives under certain circumstances, animals simply don’t.

Let’s think of some humans who would never want to kill themselves, no matter how wretched their lives – mentally challenged? babies? Hmm, we don’t call putting them to sleep ‘euthanasia’. We call it murder. Humans murder uncountable animals for entertainment, food, money, and sometimes because they’re ugly or boring, so why shy away from calling this particular act, murder?

The reason has to do with keeping our conscience clear. Some humans are kinder than others - just enough to not be able to live with an animal’s blood on their hands, but not enough to care for it when it’s terminally-ill. In the context of animals, PTS/euthanasia are clever terms invented by this class of humans.

I, of course, am one of them. Given that distemper doesn’t affect humans, it was perfectly possible for me to take the puppy back to my place and care for her till her last day. But that would have taken time away from writing this piece, or reading a book, or a morning run. To avoid the trouble, I chose to murder, oops, euthanize her, and convinced myself that I chose the best for her, not for myself. My not holding her tight while she died confirms this self-deception – doing so would have made the murder all too real. Perhaps it’s not a coincidence that euthanasia and euphemism share the first two letters.

Though I supported Aruna Shanbaug’s euthanasia back when the case was being heard, I am now glad that the SC didn’t buckle down. The woman was comatose and couldn’t have consented. If in future we do euthanize someone without their consent, let’s all just accept that we were too bored with taking care of them, or with spending our money/taxes on them.

I went back to the office after murdering her. The mother was sniffing around, probably looking for her daughter who was whisked away and later murdered by a group of conspiring humans, without her knowledge. The siblings were running after the mother to catch hold of her dangling breasts, blithely delighted that there was now one less competitor.

When sons grow up, and fathers grow old

Growing up, the only good thing about papa’s fondness for पैर दबवाना was the sound of his snoring as soon as I lay my hands upon his feet. If the loud announcement, चलो बेटा पैर दबाओ, of his arrival home from office was the death knell, the snoring was the sound of freedom.

When I was a kid, every time Papa came back from office - ebullient as ever, his face lit up with a smile at the sight of his nuclear family – he would deliver the death knell, without fail, in his characteristic baritone voice that echoed all around the house till it reached my hiding spot and demanded that I appear before him. 

As per ritual, he would quickly change into his shorts, lie down on the bed, and shake his feet vigorously while looking up at the ceiling, the smile getting broader in anticipation. Sometimes he would croon आओ आओ बेटा पैर दबाओ repeatedly while his head bobbled sideways in an eerily Indian fashion, in rhythm with his feet. That was the ultimate signal. Firmly glued to the chair by the bedside, I knew the good old अरे पापा…. in a pleading tone was my last resort. Those two words always worked. Without letting his smile flicker, he would do my job of completing the sentence by inserting a lame excuse at the end – something like अरे बेटा पढ़ाई भी तो करनी हैI Far more rarely he would guilt-trip me into leaving the chair by following up his request with अरे बेटा बाप के पैर दबाने से आशिर्वाद मिलता हैI in a singsong, jovial tone. Persuasion was never his intention, and I always went back to my chair after पैर दबाना for a few seconds, maybe minutes on a bad day. Soon, he would be snoring regardless of my actions.

As I sit on the same chair today, I notice the plaster on the walls is chipping off; plans of whitewashing never did materialize. The once-dazzling copper vessel from which papa still drinks water now has streaks of black; he says it’s good for health. The ceiling has dark patches I’d never noticed before, though the fan looks stainless from the daily wiping. The CD music system which was once brought into the house with much fanfare now lies covered with a white cloth; I like that about my house, we don’t throw things out. We bury them with honour, in plain sight.

Papa’s return from office today is not marked not by his loud, baritone voice. There is no voice at all, except of the door knob turning in his hand as he enters the room while I sit on the chair inside. He catches me off guard. It strikes me that it’s a ploy to catch me before I can find a hiding place. For a moment I think of rushing to my favourite hiding spot out the back door. But there’s no need. This isn’t a ploy. The death knell died a long time back, somehow it’s the first time I notice it.

The smile is still there, as heartfelt as ever, only less wide. The ritual begins – he changes into his shorts and lies down on the bed – but doesn’t conclude with the old crooning and shaking of the feet. It concludes in stillness and silence.

I don’t quite know why, but I leave the chair and offer पैर दबानाI The intent is honest, though I speak the words hesitantly. I should know the offer is one he can’t refuse, but it’s a first for both of us, so there’s that awkwardness off the bat. Papa doesn’t say anything. He just looks at me. Maybe he thinks this is a joke, or I have turned into one of those children who demand disproportionate favours in return for meagre ones. Whatever he thinks, within three seconds he says हाँ हाँ बेटाI The feet shake again, and the smile broadens.

It’s been years since I did पैर दबानाI This time I fail to clutch his feet in the usual circumference of my hands I have grown so used to; I have to reduce it - maybe my hands have grown bigger, but his feet sure look thinner. The moment I increase the pressure, he asks me to slow down; maybe I have grown stronger, but he sure has grown weaker. As my hands move down his long legs, the skin on them feels much looser than before. It’s hard for a son to accept any ugliness about his father, but the wrinkled skin around his toes doesn’t give me a choice. Years ago, I used to lightly pull at the jet black hair on his legs during पैर दबानाI. He liked it. Now, I have to look hard for jet black hair to pull at. The wristwatch Papa is wearing slips down his left arm far more easily than it did as he raises the arm to put it behind his head; legs, arms – he’s shrinking. The decade-old thing he still wears to bed is now the youngest thing permanently attached to his body.

I hear a faint बहुत अच्छा बेटा, खूब आशीर्वाद मिलेगा before it trails off into a snore. It’s still the best thing about पैर दबाना , but this time I don’t run away.

The Ghazi Attack: What sells more than sex?

Nationalism. And this movie has dollops of it.

But before I come to that, I must mention something else – I am stunned (a la Rannvijay of Roadies) that not one Bollywood reviewer has pointed out that Ghazi Attack depicts events far closer to those of WWII, than those of Indo-Pak war.

The movie, which claims to be inspired by the purported sinking of Pak submarine Ghazi by an Indian destroyer INS Rajput, instead shows two subs in a death dance, where the Indian sub ends up sinking the Pak sub. In real combat, the only confirmed incidence where a sub sank its enemy counterpart happened on Feb 9, 1945 when British sub HMS Venturer sank German sub U-864, off the coast of Bergen, Norway.

Now, it’s a remote possibility that the director/script writer wasn’t aware of this event, but nevertheless, it shows poor research on the part of Bollywood reviewers.

Coming back to where I started. Man, if this movie was a human being, its catchphrase would be “मेरी रगों में खून नहीं देशप्रेम दौड़ता हैI” Neglecting the remote possibility expressed above, the very basis for this film is a lie inflicted on an uninformed public to draw them to the theatres. It doesn’t end there. The movie plays the national anthem and “saare jahan se acha…”, and copiously brandishes the Tricolour at regular intervals. Poor audience had to stand up more than once. Not me, though.

Besides the (ab)use of nationalism, there are two other aspects of the movie worth pondering over – its disclaimer at the very beginning, and the liberal use of creative licence by the director.

The disclaimer in this movie is the longest, the most slowly read (take a lesson, guy who speaks “mutual funds are subject to…”), and the most elaborate I have seen on screen. It reassures the audience that “all people associated with this film are law-abiding citizens”, and that “its intention is not to outrage or offend anybody, that it doesn’t in any manner support the expressions used by its characters, and that it makes no claim to historical accuracy.” Man, these are not encouraging signs for a country going into 21^st century.

The use of creative licence is hard to dispute, and by no means do I advocate banning/regulating anything. The replacement of a destroyer in the real battle by a submarine in the movie could also be attributed to creative licence. The problem is that most people would walk away from the movie believing this is close to what actually happened, when that’s not even remotely true. Worse, people might assume destroyers and submarines are the same thing. The depiction of how a submarine works, while quite realistic in parts, is wildly off the mark when it’s shown to lift off from the ocean bed after being struck by a landmine laid down by the enemy sub. In another bizarre scene, the reciting of the national anthem by Indian sailors is picked up by the enemy on its sonar-detecting device. A lot of what’s shown in the movie is simply impossible, and this isn’t the first movie to go down that path. There is no issue when the movie is fantasy fiction (Matrix, Iron Man) but a movie which claims to be inspired by real events ought to be more careful in its depiction. It’s commendable that the movie didn’t name the submarine INS Rajput (maybe it didn’t get the permission?), though the enemy sub is deceptively named after the real boat. 

In the same vein, would it be just to make a movie in 2080, purportedly inspired by Narendra Modi’s life, where the protagonist is shown to fall from grace after a Watergate-like scandal? Note that this is different from works such as 'The man in the high castle', which are based on an alternative version of history. Here the audience has no chance of assuming what's shown/written to be the truth. In the former case, where the truth is buried under the weight of history, no amount of disclaimers will stop a handful of people, especially foreigners, from believing that the movie depicts the truth. But as I said, by no stretch of imagination should this call for a ban. Self-regulation is the best form of regulation.

Talking of self-regulation, I made a mistake by watching a Hindi movie that wasn’t directed by Anurag Kashyap. Gotta be more disciplined now.