Saying a lot, saying a little… who cares?
Posts tagged controversy
of savita and sacrilege
Mar 15th
Posted by SEV in staying.general
‘Tis a little hard to come up with a good way of intro-ing topical posts, while including my own snarkiness in the mix.
Nevertheless, here goes nothing.
It sort of splits up.. oh, you’ll see.
************************************
The infamous Savita Bhabhi was moved to the more focused Kirtu.com. Yes, focused. Only pr0n comics of Indian origin. The market has been created, it is now time to really take advantage of it. Eh?. 
What will it cost me?
For all our loyal fans, we have worked out a very special offer today. If you signup this month, you can become a Kirtu.com exclusive member for only 9.95$ a month. This offer will only be available for the first 100 members, so hurry. Once this offer is over, new members will have to pay 15$ per month.
[Link]
Yes, its paid. Paid. The desperation of the average Indian male may convince him to loosen his purse strings, while he loosens his pants.
They even have “sneak peek” comics on the front page for those of us who want to make sure that Savita’s “class” has not been lowered (or raised, depending on your POV) as a result of asking us to pay for it.
This paywall happened over 2 months ago. Well before all the hoopla regarding partial feeds recently. That they’ve not taken down the paywall probably means that at least a few people have shelled out. And thats all it takes to keep the site running, really.
After all, how many ads can you target to the average desperate f*ck?
That’s rhetoric, stop answering. And no, I’ve not subscribed. I wouldn’t have even if the Mrs didn’t exist. I prefer my pr0n to be free.
At the other extreme of India, f
rom a couple of months back, the front page of TOI that is alongside stares at me in the face.
[Link to TOI, TOI.com article]
Lets see. There was once this guy who decided to petition that photo ID cards need not have proper photos of the person being ID-ed.
He told people around him, and they agreed that it was a good idea. He then petitioned.
Nobody tried to reason with him that the EC and High Court judgments already made on the matter multiple times actually made sense. Due to the beauty of democracy, he was allowed to file petition and waste the Supreme Court’s time with the matter.
His argument?
Counsel for petitioner M Ajam Khan had contended that asking ‘purdah-nashin’ women to lift their veil for being photographed would amount to sacrilege as their photographs would be seen by many men working as polling agents and electoral officers.
Well truly. Women’s passport IDs being seen by men. Sacrilege indeed.
The SC told him to stop acting like an idiot, and think about what he’s asking them to agree to. Which resulted in:
When the petitioners again insisted on protection of the religious sentiments, the bench said: “If someone comes to vote in a burqa and the photograph was also taken with a veil covering the face, how would anyone identify the voter?’’ Explaining that right to vote was only a statutory right and not a fundamental right, it said: “Right to contest an election is an extension of the right to vote. Can anyone contest an election saying a photograph of her face be not taken?”
[Emphasis mine]
To me that last underline is a goldmine. Imagine, if you will, the world where burqa-clad women can vote with burqa-clad IDs for burqa-clad women who are standing for office.
We’ll never know who won and due to whose vote. Ever.
Actually, that may be an improvement to what we have now. Just sayin’
************************************
And thus:
Savita Bhabhi walks into the voter office, wearing a burqa (Why? The first four times she left the house unclad – without a burqa, perverts – she ended up with (in order): the milkman, the sweeper, the man at the corner waiting for a bus, and the bus conductor. Realizing that the only way out is to ensure that the average Indian is not titillated more than necessary, she adopts her “disguise”). The voting officer won’t let her vote without removing the burqa. Savita resists. He insists. She resists more. He insists more. She gives in, misunderstands, and takes off the entire ensemble, burqa and all. The officer yields to baser instincts and the polling booth cover, for a change, houses two people for a while. Unknown to her, the polling booth camera films the whole sequence. Which is then sold on the internet via Kirtu.com for $10 a month. Meanwhile the SC has to contend with the plethora of cases petitioning to allow no heterosexual acts in voting booths as it would amount to sacrilege, even if the woman in question is Savita.
Savita is just sad that voting happens once every 5 years. Piracy is easiest to combat when new content can be released on a regular basis. There are only so many milkmen, neighbors, and cousins that one can take advantage of.
Meanwhile, a frighteningly large number of voting officers are hit on by homosexuals. For god knows what reason. Maybe just because they can.
Actually, making Savita the poster girl for encouraging voting (Savita saying “I voted”, while licking her thumb) might be one of the more brilliant ideas I may have had.
changing india
Dec 7th
Posted by SEV in staying.thoughts
it is now widely accepted that the “resilience” or the “spirit” that we have lauded so much in the past is a myth that most people have stopped believing in. people are angrier this time round, if anything, the attacks supposedly have fewer people asking for mourning, and more people asking ‘when will we make them mourn this day?’
but do we really think this can happen? do we believe india will manage to bring terrorists to justice? do we believe that india can prevent any more terror attacks?
not really. as everyone unanimously tends to agree around their tables, india can never change.
sailesh made a valid point that we need to change before we can expect anything else to change. and given a chance, most people will actually agree with this ideology. however, given the fact that the large majority will not change right now, we too will not change right now. the circular reasoning is perfect. and the state of affairs go on as they always have.
more than one person refuses to discuss the matter. i cannot censure them for this, every discussion that we have ever indulged in has been academic. we talk, and then we go back to living our lives. can anyone really be blamed for doing this? the days of the selfless person – the person who lives for others first, and later himself – are long over. discussions should lead to action, but today – when i sit in the US arguing over dinner as to why india’s foreign policy has always sucked – i know, as does everyone else, that there is very little chance that what we talk about will ever leave the dinner table. on the one hand we know that only we who have experienced the crap that is the indian life, can actually do anything about it. on the other hand, we have way too many other things to involve us: our careers, our significant others, our gadgets, everything else.
i complain that the president is uneducated, that politicians by-and-large rarely study beyond school, but i will not enter the system myself. i shouldn’t have to, politics is not for everyone. is there any real way in which i can ensure that the candidates i vote for are worthy of my vote?
there were an interesting set of initiatives talked about in this NYT article: to some extent, people are appearing to realize that such a system can only be reformed by the people themselves. on the other hand, the article also talked about how the average person only talks, in the end, he will still bribe his traffic havaldar. i have done similar things too, i could justify it as my token of appreciation for someone who did their job properly at the RTO.. but i know that this is the behaviour that starts the slippery slide. the large majority are now tired of the state of affairs, as evidenced by comments on the previous post. but they also believe that everything is a sham, and nothing can be done about anything.
change is a funny thing in these circumstances.. we say we want things to change, but we also worry about what that change will mean for us. no more getting away with traffic violations. no more parking anywhere anyhow. no more getting official permits without having to go through the process of application. and then people have the right to want everyone to toe the line. “why catch only me now? first catch all those people who got it done illegally and then come to me. then don’t let those people in power get it done illegally. when you’re done with all that come back to me. in the meanwhile give this to me now.”
the fact of the matter is that we want someone else to get things changed without having to change much ourselves. we laud systems “abroad” while, as we have all repeated at dinner tables, the only difference is that people respect the system “abroad”. somehow this never applies when one is in india. simply because the large uneducated majority does not do much by the book, the educated minority does nothing either. we each have about 300 billion peeves with the way things do not happen in india, and believe that nothing can be done by us about even one of those peeves. our solutions generally range the gamut: from stopping the payment of taxes to endorsing president’s rule to simply getting rid of all politicians.
i remember arguing once with friends about how nothing could ever change in india. there was a point at which i believed nothing could ever change in india. today, i cannot believe this. the fact of the matter is that we don’t really want anything to change. we would rather mourn the dead, lament our fates, express disgust at a broken system, and then go back to systematically ensuring that it happens again. those people held at gunpoint that day, those soldiers and civilians who died: every one of us is as responsible as the politicians and the system we persist in blaming for their murder.
i know, it is easy to say such things sitting in a faraway country. to talk about living within the indian system when i am not actually having to practice what i preach. unfortunately, all i can do right now is talk. its the only way i know of ensuring that the indian in me will change.
do dark times really lie ahead ?
Dec 5th
Posted by SEV in staying.thoughts
after reading this, a question that has been hovering at the back of my head begs analysis.
i’ve spoken about it before as well, and even if i have been disparaging about the reaction of people to a lot of the mails i have received, some current developments mean second thoughts should be had. if not third.
orkut is, and always has been very open in terms of structure: everyone finds everyone, meets anyone, can read about anyone, can add anyone. the concept was that you would not invite someone you do not know to orkut. however, making gmail – and hence orkut – available to anyone kinda kicks that idea in the teeth. orkut is not the “trusted circle” of friends they call themselves anymore. the effect is already seen – fake profiles are created for every possible misuse – whether slander, paedophilia, or just a misguided sense of fun.
scraps are literally meant to be ‘scraps’: pointless tid-bits. and should be used that way. people misuse them, talk about everyone on them – there will be consequences to acting thoughtlessly. i think orkut scraps were designed to be quick ‘hey-how-are-you’ messages, not personal ads. or long messages about the self. are we still worried about the content being publicly accessible? delete all scraps. i have nearly 2000, would keeping them help me? i think not. deleted.
how restrictive is orkut when it comes to details ? you can choose who can see what, some generic details are open to all. those details, i should think, are pretty common. or obvious. religion, language, books, music.. these are shared by a wide majority. i see now that ‘google talk id’ is common knowledge – i.e. can be seen by everyone – which is stupid. can i change that ? only if i disable google talk+orkut. which is pointless integration i have come to believe. disabled.
i’m not saying that these are the only issues, there are more which i may be skipping over. when they do occur to me, there will be updates. the point is that this source of possible privacy breach can be controlled to some extent.
now, for the question of whether its safe at all. there are two parts to it. the first depends on what level i stop at for restricting privacy. the second is pertaining to how far misuse by a third party affects me.
today, having an online presence is a matter of choice. on the internet, i have currently chosen to maintain a fairly public blog, a photo album, profiles on various forums, a social networking presence, and email. the blog is easily found when searched on any search engine – and has enough detail about me to identify me. is that safe ? not exactly, if someone means to do harm by using information about me, against me. but that was a choice i made when i associated my blog with me. my other presences aren’t as public, but can be found if needed. the bottom line is that once you decide to exist online, you have to decide where you draw the line of privacy when it comes to publicly accessible knowledge. not so publicly accessible knowledge – that is the gray area. google is a repository for a lot of my data – my mail, my notes, my calendar, my photos and so on. do i trust google enough to not misuse this information ? i have to. or else i don’t use the service. the same logic applies to semi-public information e.g. orkut. i have to trust that google, amazon, paypal, ebay and so many other services i use everyday will not decide they can do whatever they want with all that information.
the fine print of any online service would yield some very scary codicils. yahoo and msn are supposed to have clauses that say any work transmitted via them becomes their property. orkut retains some rights over what information you put up on it. bloglines has some kind of rights over the content of feeds you access via their interface. and so on.
when you decided to get an online presence – and that includes an webmail account – you decided you trust someone with all that information. that google is trying to centralize all your online information, and doing it successfully, doesn’t make them the big bad wolf… it makes them the smartest of all the little piggy online services out there.
misuse of my information that is accessible by someone else – the question is who.. and what. orkut ? i believe its just a neat way of keeping in touch. say, i see a profile of someone else, and from what i know of the person, the data appears fake – am i really going to change my opinion of that person ? companies will not use data they found on orkut as a metier of the person. if they do, their HR department has to be the worst in the world. if people i don’t know – and will not meet – see a fake profile of me – does their opinion of me affect me ? if they are willing to form an opinion of me without ever meeting me/emailing me/chatting with me, what does that say about them ? communities exist that degrade others, but then they exist in real life – and have way more effect than on orkut, of all places.
as far as other online services i use go, they probably contain a lot more personal and sensitive information than i would like to admit. however, i either trust their assurances and use them. or i don’t use anything online at all.
dark times lie ahead, true. too many people use things they have no idea about. or have the inclination to learn about. they will allow problems to develop, maybe even cause them through misuse, and then cause devolution.
and thats the part i hate the most.
encephalous leadership
Jul 18th
Posted by SEV in staying.general
i had no idea this happened, but greatbong kinda summarizes anything i have to say on the topic.
just for comparison, an observation by suyog.
its simple really. sometimes, we indians just suck.
now, i’m really feeling it
May 25th
Posted by SEV in staying.in.my.head
when i heard that reservations are official, the feeling of deja vu; that feeling of doom hit me.
but then i figured that it doesn’t really matter… protests will happen, hunger strikes and everything; and eventually it’ll all die down.time heals; i think. or makes you apathetic and cynical.
thats how it works. all over the bloody planet.
not.
IIT-bombay students, people i know, are on hunger strikes. doctors are still on strike. medical students in delhi are protesting actively, preventing interviews; making themselves heard. rallies. door-to-door canvassing. everything possible.
the country is not giving up.
and even as i type this, goosebumps prickle, spirits rise – i want to be there, i want to strike, to protest; to make myself heard.
a spirit that used to exist in india, that fuelled a revolution 50 years ago has received a shot of adrenalin. i thought indians have become apathetic, given up on a system that has been systematically taken apart; away from its original ideas – that does not work anymore.
apparently not.
inquilab is back.
inquilab zindabad.
the leader behind it all..
May 23rd
Posted by SEV in staying.aside
ladies and gentlemen, the man who decided that reservations are the solution to the upliftment of the “backward classes”.
Arjun Singh’s Interview
Please, read, download, laugh, and get scared. get very scared. this is the typical leader of the country.
i am so, so proud.
