Safety of Women in India

Very disturbing language used, Reader Discretion advised.

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India is a country which enjoys reality life voyeurism. Indian men start their sexual overtures from their immediate family. Most of the Indian girls are molested by their uncles and cousins. What kind of safety these animals will provide to women? It will feel like a shock to some but it is true that most Indian men, youngsters, adults and elderly alike are voyeuristic and eye women in and around the house as an object of satisfying their sexual appetite. These could be young girls, teenage cousins, little sisters, sister-in-laws, visiting relatives even house-maids. Indian men are brought up on a steady dose of pornography and adult literature littered with pornographic images. This kind of perverse exposure creates a distorted image of women in the minds of men. When they grow up they look at and approach women only to get their hands on one and later boast among their friends what they did as if telling the story of an adult film. Girls are used and abused as an object. So many times girls are lured on internet and taken on a date by a youngster and molested even raped and sometimes worse gang raped. 

It is high time that women stop being the puppet at the hands of men. Today, Women need to Stop depending on their brothers, fathers, cousins, bfs, husbands, in laws etc. for safety and take their own safety in their own hands. During high school & College Girls should join NCC which will give them training to use firearms and they will gain confidence and discipline. They spend a lot of time on internet, why not watch some videos on safety for women. They should invest time and a little money to learn self defence against unarmed and armed assailants. Only knowing to defend yourself makes you safe. Watching videos on "Krav Maga" will help greatly. I understand that household chores require a lot of energy, same amount of energy if channelised properly can defeat a group of men. Praying is for the week, awakening and taking control of things is for the strong.

Wake up women of India, you need to be strong before something happens. After something has happened there is no use of talking to newspapers or TV who just want juicy sexy voyeuristic story to sell their Print area / Airtime. Better Safe than Sorry. Today educate yourself and others, spread the word that there is no safety outside unless there is a strong will inside each and every female. Buy Pepper Spray, Keep a small knife in the handbag and more importantly learn to use these items. Learn about the soft points on male body learn how to attack if attacked. This blog is not promoting violence but promotes actions for prevention of a heinous act.

Keep yourself safe, do not hesitate to confront the offender be it your cousin or uncle or a roadside Romeo. Most of the time a strong look straight in the eyes will scare the crap out of some men. 

Jai Hind.

Risk if cutting down mountains for roads

First of all I would like to state that I am writing this blog on the basis of my personal observations. I am no scientist but I studied science and have keen interest in science in everyday life. I can not help observe the construction work going on at Qurm Heights, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. There are two construction sites, one is near Lulu Darsait and the other one along the winding road that leads to Qurm. At the Lulu side the construction is basically targeted at widening the over-bridge by constructing an extra lane to ease traffic. Whereas at the Qurm heights side, the construction is to extend the road by adding an extra lane, which is possible only on the outside which is along the mountain. The mountain had already been chiselled to make the current road and is being further carved in order to accommodate the new lane.

The mountains on both sides of the road are very high and there are two distinct parts to these, one is the top  portion, that is pale yellow colour which seems to be porous earth rock and the base is a more metallic solid rock structure which is dark grey brown in colour. The same colour are the mountain in and around Darsait, Darsait Beach area and Mutrah. If observed closely it seems as if the yellow mountains were pushed upwards by the grey brown rock from beneath due to tectonic activity. The grey rock looks as strong as metal and one can trust it is not going to crumble down itself, on the other hand the yellow rocks seem to be not so solid and the mountains have lost considerable chunks of these rocks gradually. There are small landslides, if one may call these that, all over the mountains.

Now comes the disturbing part, I am not a geologist but I can not help observe that the mountain structure is such that the top brittle mountain seems have a solid rock structure. The engineers presently are planning to cut at the same grey brown solid rock in order to accommodate an extra lane. It is equivalent to carving out a building's foundation. The angles at which the mountain had been carved previously are precarious to say the least. Adding to that if the engineers are going to cut more, it is going to leave a sheer drop from high up the mountain right till the road. This may look interesting to a rock-climber as a challenging task but for a road user, it would mean more "falling rocks" signs and worse. Second things that is causing trouble in my mind is that there is the resonance factor. For the uninitiated reader, resonance is when vibration of one thing causes another to vibrate in unison with the first. We observe sometimes that the window ACs sometimes cause a very disturbing hum if there are a number of these working at the same time, that is due to resonance. Another example is sometimes two vehicles travelling neck to neck start to resonate and you seem to hear two engine sounds. If given to a scientist, she can bring down a building or a bridge with something as little as a tuning fork!! The vehicles moving on the mountain road at Qurm heights create resonance and the mountain vibrates with that, though very little. But the effects are clearly visible for all to see. There are loose rocks which seem to have crumbled from the top through the crevices. It creates stir in me when I observe these rocks imagining if some more were to follow from the top where already the tips are forming wicked shapes.

Where I live in Darsait I have a building size brown rock next to my building and a towering yellow mountain in the west, the brae of which is very steep.  My building is located right below the highest point at Qurm Darsait road just below the parking & a small park. The mountain is daunting but again made of the yellow stone and it certainly has some portions which have crumbled in the past. I observed all this in the last few days and today as I drove back from work. The traffic was thick and I had the chance to have a long hard look at what is going on. As I woke up in the middle of the night to have a drink of water, I felt suddenly afraid for my family and all the other families those are staying in the vicinity. I know my heart might be exaggerating but a wise person once said that is it better to be afraid. I am afraid and I will not sit quietly until these are allayed.

Life, how it has changed me

Written originally to Yogesh, "I am so engulfed in the daily routine that I have started missing myself. I want to be with myself. I sometimes feel like crying and hugging myself because I am not myself anymore. I wish to re-assure myself that everything is not lost. I am running now to find peace and happiness, I the same person who used to say be lazy and find the peace in yourself no need to go anywhere. I may not deny that I am peaceful and happy but I remember meeting you and being with you gave me a happiness that has been lost somewhere. I don’t find myself happy with anything now a day. I have convinced myself that I am better than others who are living a life running to find happiness. I am in the knowledge that happiness is a state of mind and can’t be achieved any other way. But truly being happy like I used to be when I used to take my vehicle and go to a Gurdwara just to go there on a Sunday and sit near the fields or on a tube-well. Hearing the sound of falling water used to make me one with itself. I remember one day I stopped my bike on the road to a Gurdwara and I went into the field and before I could know what was happening I was laughing like I had never laughed before, laughing like Osho used to described in his books and I laughed and laughed...and laughed...till there was peace complete peace....within myself. Then I cried and I cried and I cried like I never had cried before...peace was all that was left afterwards.. Complete peace and the sounds of a quiet Sunday noon time on the side of a small village road. I am that peaceful person. But fast forward to today and I can’t relate to that person much, like you can’t relate to me now. You feel I have changed but I have not, I have grown fungus and moss all around me but I am the same as before and I remember in vivid detail standing with you in the Pavte House balcony and discussing how an arrow that Yogesh shot almost reached the next block with that Tribal Bow of yours and how Arjun would have easily shot a few “Kos” with a much advanced and powerful Bow of ancient times. I remember more than I have seen and I have seen more than I can remember. I remember so many things from my childhood, stealing money from mother’s purse and playing video games. Mother catching me by ear and bring me back home from a video game shop. I still remember the strange smell that used to emanate from the TV video games. I can and will write a book on my life’s memoirs. I remember things very clearly those happened more than twenty years in Kashmir when I was just 4. And those are not based on someone else’s description or story but events those happened with me alone. Like a cow hitting me with her horns, my friend Yaqoob & his elder sister Salma who I had a crush on. Making candles of ice by leaving the tap open overnight and running downstairs from the first floor home to garden to break it and take it upstairs. The smell of roses..The silent falling of rain over the adjoining river and the empty ground next to our home. The dark clouds and the mountains in the distance and fading of light into night and still continuing rain which used to make me fearful. The taste of apple juice that dad used to bring from army canteen and the beautiful bottle that it came in. My playing with the eveready torch by pretending it to be a car with headlight. The earthquake that shook the building and the running down of the landlord’s daughters from upstairs. The neighbour Shashi who never kept her house clean and her bedsheets smelt of pee of her child. The daughters of my age of a Major who stayed on ground floor one of whom was very beautiful and our playing & her amusement. And I also remember going to the army theatre to watch love story the movie. I remember still the details of the movie. The song ye kahan aa gaye ham yuhin sath sath chalte has special meaning to me as I remember my days in Kashmir with this song. The quarter of the Major’s driver and the smell of incense and the pictures of Hindu Gods in his room. The winter chill I can never forget and the heater with two heating coils and my putting hair on the orange hot coil to see them burn. Oh the wonderful memories. The lovely memories I can’t share with anyone. Just being in my heart somewhere until some day I take them out dust them look at them like a moving picture and again stash them in the cherished box for future, keeping them alive forever. I will certainly start writing a book. I will start writing a letter to my father immediately because i want to say to him so many things before either of us dies. I have to find my peace with him, because I don’t want to die without telling him I love him dearly and respect him, and I don’t want him to die without him knowing that his son is not all that careless about him.Life has its own ways to making you knowledgeable. I get up early in the morning and listen to a discourse on the TV narrated by someone named Maskeen, The guy is dead but the programmes recorded earlier are being telecast every morning by the time I am ready to go to office. He is an amusing guy in his 70s. Earlier while I was in India, I did not use to like him as he used to seem very egotist. And the funny thing is that he repeats what he says. Like he says, “Vinamr hona bahut mushkil hai, bahut mushkil hai, bahut mushkil hai”. But he says sometimes some things which touch me somewhere and I have been regularly listening to him daily for half hour now. He is egotist still in the programme and in the kind of language he uses but some things that he says are correct and apt. Like what he said today was a quote from someone else, “When I asked you O’ Allah, I cannot ask anything more now from you”. One more thing he said today that Socrates said that when he was young he said to his friends ask me anything and I can tell. When he grew adult he started saying I may not know a few things. When he grew old he said I don’t know. I have a feeling of deep satisfaction all the time with me. I am less in turmoil over large and small problems of life. I have always lived life in the moment as I can’t do anything about past except learn from it and about the future as well except hope for the best and be prepared for the worst. And worst can be very bad. So present is good, enjoy the moment, live and appreciate life to the fullest that is what I believe in. This I presume is a humble way to look at life. I am not worried much about largely anything, and that I think makes me all the different from the people around me. I am not rich, not very sound financially but I am strong and determined to succeed in life. And this success is material success that I am talking about. There is nothing I am able to do about the spiritual progress and the satiation of my soul. I have become a toy of the material aspect of my life".

My Yogi

I want to dedicate this to my friend Yogesh Gupta, who is a close friend and has been in my heart for many years now. We met about 15 years back and grew close because of common interests of music, meditation and most important the mystique that intrigued both of us. We experimented with meditation and with music. Reading Osho books and trying out mediation techniques. Yogesh plays wonderful guitar and he used to make compositions and he used to play them. I remember we used to discuss what the composition brings to mind, like a road in the middle of a desert or a tunnel with a hint of light at the other end. We smoked together cigarettes in Punjab Agriculture University Campus and discussed wonderful aspects of life on beautiful summer days. The summer clouds still bring those memories back to me like those were just moments we spent a few days back. We are in touch now as well and write to each other about the experiences of life to each other. We still love the person inside us who is free, carefree, vibrant, aware, awake, simple, clear, unblemished, on a path towards the unknown and an enquisitive human being. I love my dear friend Yogesh and I respect the hint of God he has in him.

The issue of Health awareness

I have come across a problem recently and have been completely caught unaware about it. My wife was not well and when we went to visit the doctor we were told that she is diabetic. Both of us were sad and shocked to hear the confirmation after complete diagnosis. But soon we realised that being worried about the problem shall not be any solution and we have to take precautionary measures to control the problem as best we can. So we charted out a diet schedule and cut out completely on the un-necessary fizzy drinks, juices & sweets. We shifted from wheat flour to health mix flour made from pulses and whole grains. Full cream milk gave way to low fat and same way for yogurt. Junk food was completely crossed out and the once a week fast food joint visit now is once a month or less. We have got the blood test conducted recently after two weeks of medicine and diet control and to our surprise the results are very positive. The value from 13.6 has come down to 9.7 much closer to the allowed limit of 6. This has happened through our mutual support and understanding and most importantly the Love and affection for the loved one. These kind of problems may arise in our lives and have to be encountered with courage and support. I have found the courage in my life partner and I am here with all my support for her.