AmarSharma-Sensible Nonsense

  Imagine you are suffering from loose motions but cannot step out of your house to relieve yourself till after sunset. Imagine you are sitting in an open field for defecation with no bushes to hide behind because being in arid zone, there is very little vegetation around. You are forced to stand up everytime you hear vehicle approaching or people talking and wait till they pass by and are a few hundred meters away from you. Only then you get to sit again. Imagine these interruptions happening several times during just one round of defecating in an open field! As she speaks with me in the sunny back lawn of her ancestral home in her village, I can see pain and anger in her eyes but not helplessness. Meet Chhavi Rajawat, the Sarpanch of Soda village in Rajasthan. When I jokingly tell her that a village called Soda gives an impression of it being a village where people are fond of drinking, she laughs and goes on to narrate all that ails her village and how she cannot l...

Upon learning that Muslim young men were getting some sort of special training to Patao (woo) Hindu girls in order to successfully establish marital relations with them, scores of young Hindu men across the country are reportedly switching over to the other side. Thousands of skullcap wearing young Hindu lads were seen searching for these `Love Jihad’ academies in many parts of the country, specially the state of Uttar Pradesh. One group of `Muslim looking’ Hindu boys this reporter spoke to reluctantly spilled the beans behind their move to convert. They said that they have been trying very hard to hook girls from their communities in their neighbourhood; schools; colleges; workplaces; bars and even places of worship but the girls didn’t lay any grass before them (Ghaas tak nahin dali hamen) .On the contrary, they got their fathers & brothers to beat them up and then threatened them with tying Rakhi. One of them had even approached Bhoga guru Baba Kamdev for ti...

In politics as, in every other facet of life, TIMING occupies a great significance. A whistle blower blowing the whistle when something wrong is happening is a big deal. It can draw attention to the `wrong’ and help nip it in the bud. But whistle being blown after the thief has bolted cannot be accorded the same respect & must be looked at suspiciously. Recenlty, we have had two such instnces- One of an AIIMS Forensic Science doctor claiming that he was coerced/influenced by the powers that be to dilute/manipulate/conceal facts in the sensational death of Ms. Sunanda Pushkar, wife of Congress MP Shashi Tharoor. Soon after, AIIMS denied the charges levelled by this doctor and it was revealed that he had an axe to grind with AIIMS management relating to his career prospects, promotions etc.Or perhaps it is a strategic move by the doctor for endearing himself to the ruling dispensation by giving it scoopfuls of muck to be thrown at the ousted regime and keeping it...

In a secret & astonishing move, Pakistan has approached the United Nations asking it to pass a resolution declaring the bordering Indian states of Jammu & Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan & Gujarat in addition to all its coastal states & parts of the North East as Pakistani territory effective May 17, 2014. Pakistani Army has parallely started moving troops to the international borders adjoining these Indian states so that they can swiftly take control of existing Indian territory once the UN passes the motion. Pakistani Navy has also moved its fleet of warships to station them in the Bay of Bengal to take control of West Bengal, Orissa, Kerala & Tamil Nadu.   This unprecedented development has its roots in the declaration made by one Giriraj Singh, a BJP leader, wherein he is reported to have said that “those opposing the party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi would have to go to Pakistan after the general elections”.   http://indiatoday...

At the recently concluded India Today Conclave 2014, Arvind Kejriwal of the Aam Aadmi Party fielded several questions & barbs from the audience. One question that he was repeatedly asked by various who’s who of the country (yes, the conclave is for the elite, by the elite & of the elite) is whether he was in the race to become India’ Prime Minister. When he refused to confirm, he was then criticized for not helping matters as it was sending confusing signals to the voters as to who then should they vote for; who then is going to solve India’s plethora of problems; and if he isn’t in the race, then all that is left to vote for is Mr. Narendra Modi (implied in their queries cum observations). To these, Kejriwal clearly responded by admitting that he didn’t have the answers, leaving the audience feeling `let-down’. What came out was that `people’ were wanting to repose their trust in some individual to govern the country just the way we do with commercial contractors and s...