The Voice In My Head…

Why? Because my blog has been nagging majorly fighting with me that I’ve just not been paying it any attention any more, that there’s been nothing really worthwhile written on it for a while, that I’m not replying to comments - *and* worst of all - that I’m flirting having an illicit affair with (God forbid!) Facebook! (seriously darling, how could you even think that?!)

So, here I am, trying to convince you, my dear dear dear darling thevoiceinmyhead.com; as much as I’ve neglected you & my commenters in the recent past, as perhaps not upto your high standards as recents posts may have been - and as much time as I’ve spent on Facebook recently - TVIMH, I do love you.

I love you very very very much. Really, really.

There have been SO many (so many!) times in the recent past I’ve wanted to post about stuff - like the time I “discovered” Pot Pourri has fabulous breakfasts - in fact it’s become my new favorite brekky place (I’ve done Crepe Station to death)..

Like all the stuff I want to tell you about my new favorite male-friend-in-a-supporting-role (deyamm you lead actor, where the bloody hell are you?) - he’s British (rather old fashioned & grandfatherly) and on occasion buys me African Daisies Oh, ho-hum & hurray!

Like when I saw ‘Get Smart’ and I wanted to tell everyone to go see, it was SUCH a fabulously fun movie. Oh, how I laughed. Laughed, laughed, laughed. I still have this nigling (is that a word? hmmm) doubt however, that they censored a bit of the movie… Anyway I enjoyed it despite that - and despite the loss of hundreds of my hard earned paisas (ok, the date’s paisas) that went into the Rs. 180/- popcorn at Metro Adlabs late late night show (seriously, it is just me or is popcorn at all our theaters becoming RIDICULOUSLY expensive???)

Or like the time I wanted to post about how because our President Pratibha Patil decided to visit Mumbai - they STOPPED ALL THE TRAFFIC (seriously WTHECK?????) - for hours on end. I waited for exactly 25 minutes on my way to the city in the morning (from 11.05 to 11.30am) and for about 45 mins on the way back in the evening (rush hour, 5 onwards) and I’m thinking:

BLOODY HELL, seriously.
Why can’t the President be FLOWN in from the airport to the city in a helicopter? There’s a helipad at the Mantralaya (& other places too in the city) and if someone’s important enough to stop traffic completely for hours, then they should be flown in! It’ll be faster for them and it won’t inconvenience the entire city.
I mean, seriously, how bloody inconsiderate. I don’t care if you’re the President of the country - you have no right to disrupt anyone’s work schedules. It’s just not right.
And in rush hour too? Seriously, you should have seen it - one side of the road jammed with cars, miles & miles & miles & miles on end. The other side perfectly clear.
And I counted the entourage: 42 CARS. Seriously, I kid you not. 42 BLOODY CARS.
For this, we have to wait. While madam and her 42 cars pass by roads that have been “cleansed” & cleared for hours ahead.
If I was the President of India - I’d be ashamed that I was whizzing past miles & miles of people I had inconvenienced (imagine those without air con cars or those in taxis paying by the meter!) - I’d use the power I had to do something about it. Either helicopter or travel in the night or early morning.

(click on the image above to enlarge & see the miles of jammed cars & the empty road on the other side).

So you see darling blog - I had this whole post planned - see I took pics & everything - notwithstanding the hawaldar who questioned me and told me to stop. I was thinking about you & only you all the time (Facebook, who facebook? Arey yaar, sheesh.)

I thought of you VERY much when someone told me recently that I was “ruining my chances” of finding a nice boy to marry me since I blog so much. I though, what the hell - “love me, love my blog”. And if you don’t, heck, I don’t want to marry you. Sorrbloodyrey. I wrote out this whole post in my head & I even thought of great title - “I blog therefore I am, single”. It was a great post. Unfortunately I just didn’t get down to typing it down.

So you see darling blog - it’s not that I don’t love you - or that I’ve replaced you by anyone else online - no, no, never! Perish the thought!

It’s just that I’ve been slightly busy. You know, I have to go out, earn my daily wage to pay for your hosting and your url and the fancy Manolo Blahnik shoes you like (ok, perhaps that last one was just for me, and only in my fantasies. Sigh, but you get the drift). I’ve been busy, but it’s all for you. It’s always been all for you.

And I hope this rather loooong post has made up for my seeming lack of affection recently.

No?

Gosh, you are quite the drama blog aren’t you?

Ok, here’s something more just for you. Some breaking news!

I’m off to Switzerland for a bit - and then onto France. Not too long, just a little holiday - but enough for you to miss me some more before I come back & fill you up on a regular basis. Quality AND Quantity, baby, you have my word.

I promise you, I’ll miss you VERY VERY VERY much. And I also promise you I’ll give you all the khabbar when I return.

AND - I’ll also throw in a photo of me for free. To heck with the people who tell me my feeds are high only because I post photos of myself. I happen to think I write pretty decently. See how much of insults I take on your behalf blog? How much I am spat at & humiliated - and yet, undaunted, I continue to blog being true to who I am and write & post the way I like to? See, see, see??

(the precious pup incidentally isn’t mine, he’s belongs to a friend & his name is ‘Reo’, awww)

So you forgive me darling blog?

You do?

Can we have make up sex now? (heck, I’m not getting any offline anyway).

And seriously, to heck with all of those ppl who called me up after one of my recent posts & said WHOA, seriously, you prude you, what the heck are you blogging about?! To heck with them, I say.

I want you blog.

Now!

Here’s the back story for those who aren’t yet aware of the “facts” as we know them at this point:

Pretty, blonde, 15 year old Scarlett Keeling, a Britisher from Bideford, Devon was with her mother, her mother’s boyfriend and six other siblings on a six month vacation in India. At some point the mother & rest of the brood moved onto a neighboring state, leaving Scarlett in Goa - the mother insists she was in “safe hands” of a “very responsible” 25 yr old tour guide they had met. Some reports label the guide, Julio Lobo, as her boyfriend since she was staying with him.

Scarlett was then found dead on a beach in Anjuna, Goa, last month. Initially police said that she had drowned - but the victims mother Fiona MacKeown (who has nine children) pushed the police to a second investigation, where they then proved she had been drugged, raped and then killed.

Placido Carvalho and Samson D’Souza have just been arrested for raping and killing her and police today formally declared the case “closed”, saying that Scarlett had consumed high doses of cocaine and alcohol (some reports add LSD to this list) when she entered the beach shack during wee hours on the fateful day and was then given ecstasy tablets by Carvalho. After this Carvalho and D’Souza raped and murdered her.

Meanwhil Congress MP Shantaram Laxman Naik caused quite a stir at the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday when he blamed the ghastly crime on the victim’s folks. And the tourism minister Ambika Soni agreed saying: “”Naik certainly has a point”.

While many people have been quick to condemn Naik for his “shocking” statement, lots of people, many of British origin are themselves reacting in a similar fashion:

Why on earth did the mother go off and leave a fifteen year old girl, in a place like that, with a 25 year old man?
I’ll never understand these parents who seem to have such a casual attitude to looking after their kids and then wonder why something bad happens to them. - Rosy Knight, Sheffield UK

A very bad case BUT Scarlett should have been in school and taking her GCSEs - what was her mother doing taking her and her siblings out of school? Was this the action of a responsible mother? A lot of questions need to be asked. Her mother needs to be applauded by trying to discover the truth BUT she should not have been there in the first place or left while her mother went off elsewhere - she was only 15 and would imagine sexually active - responsible parenting? - Valerie, Colchester

So who’s to blame here?

Carvalho and D’Souza?: Both have confessed, so yes - Definitely and without a doubt - and I really think people like these should received maximum punishment possible. Also, a third and as yet unidentified person was also reportedly arrested a few hours ago.

The Police?: While one cannot blame them for Scarlett’s death, they are definetely 100% guilty of trying to cover it up.

The “responsible” Tour Guide Julio Lobo?: No news from his end yet. According to the mother, he was supposed to be “looking after” Scarlett. So where was he when she was getting high, being gang raped and then murdered?

The criminalization of drugs / cartels / the Russian mafia?: Lots of debate on this point. I’ve debated this before with a friend (after watching ‘We own the night‘) and I truly believe that it is more dangerous, especially for innocent children, if drugs were legalized.

The Mother / Family?: Allison Pearson of the UK Daily Mail certainly thinks so. Imo, leaving a minor alone in Goa is not the act of a responsible parent. Leave aside the fact that she was “on vacation” with other siblings for six months. However I think that before any “case of negligence” is filled against, the actual perpetrators of the crime and the corrupt police should be severely dealt with.

And how about Scarlett herself? : Should she at 15 years be drinking and taking drugs? Was she not old enough to know better? Britain is another place, perhaps it’s safe for a 15 year old to be out drinking and taking drugs on her own there (though I would imagine not). Shouldn’t she have known better?

Better to have been “safe than sorry?” Or are we completely missing the point here and blaming the victim and her family, when we should be sympathizing with them during this terrible ordeal, made worse by corrupt police?

That’s what it costs us, relatively rich, Mumbaikars for a single night out at an average night club. And that’s not counting how much we spent on dinner before we reached the club. Or number of drinks we had. Or the cost of the clothes we wore. Or the fancy car we gave to the valet.

And then there’s this and this, where parents of young girls are, “Caught in the vicious cycle of poverty, the cash-strapped parents can ill afford to refuse an offer that helps them earn Rs 100 per night”

Rs. 100/- a night. Imagine that.

Here’s me. I want:
A new Video iPod
A new Phone too - preferably the iPhone (yes, loving apple these days)
New Shoes (can never have too much of those)
New Jeans (I can’t seem to get the right shade of basic blue I want)
- not to mention the daily entertainment I crave. I want to go out with my friends; see movies, club, eat, drink & be merry.

And then there’s Moushumi, a 10 year old girl, one of the Bengali girls rescued from Bihar after being locked up, beaten and forced to dance sleazy numbers in front of violent, gun-toting crowds.

Here’s what she says:

“Although they beat us up, they served good food. It was much better than what we get at home”

Because of that, 10 year old Moushumi is willing to risk everything and go back on the stage.

And I, well, I’m not sure what I can do or what I want to do. But I know, I must do something.

The following is a copy of a letter written by the Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Raphael Cheenath, following attacks on people, churches, homes & other properties during Christmas 2007 in Orissa. I am disturbed & do not know how to react. I do know however, that when we speak out about things, chances of things being rectified usually increase. Hence, I am posting the letter here, in it’s totality.

Even as I post it though, I am (sadly) sure that there is bound to be people who will endorse such incidents (”conversion” will probably be the key excuse, as is all it is when there are any attacks on Christians in India regardless whether there is proof or not of conversions actually haven taken place).

I feel that we - Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis, Christians and all others - in democratic India should not tolerate incidents like this.

======================================================

Bhubaneswar , Jan 5, 2008: The feast of Christmas, an event of joy and peace turned out to be a tragedy for the people of Kandhamal district in Orissa. Rioters have torched hundreds of churches, institutions and houses. Thousands of people are still stranded in the forests and on streets. Here is a first-hand account of the violence and aftermath that has left minorities especially Christians in fear and anxiety, submitted by Archbishop of Cuttack Raphael Cheenath, SVD.

From Archbishop of Cuttack-Bhubaneswar Raphael Cheenath, SVD

The background of the incident:
The trouble began on 24th December in Bamunigam village, which is close to the police station under Daringibadi Block of Kandhamal District. Around 8 am, a mob of fundamentalists forcefully removed Christmas decorations put up by Ambedkar Baniko Sangho comprising local Christian entrepreneurs as a preparation for Christmas, with due permission from the administration. This was followed by exchange of words between two groups, as the fundamentalists insisted that the people stop Christmas celebrations. Within a few minutes a group of people who were stationed close-by pounced on the members of Ambedkar Baniko Sangho with sticks, swords, guns and other lethal weapons.. During midnight Mass on 24th December, miscreants hurled explosives on Archbishop’s house in Bhubaneswar which though exploded, no damage was done.

Ambulance burnt at Balliguda:

Destruction at Balliguda Carmel Convent:

Homes of Christians in the area that were completely burned (these people are now homeless and without any material possesions):

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I just saw the cover of Vogue (India) with Mrs. Shah Rukh Khan (ok fine, with Gauri Khan) - and I must admit, the first thought that came to my mind was, wow, she’s really looking fabulous.

Then I read some of the comments online at Rediff, like this one:

This photo seems liked a computer generated image of Gauri khan. Lots of touch up. I have seen her in real life..she is nowhere close to what is displayed here.

& this one:

Someone said right..Gauri looked wasted in most of the pics one has seen of her in the past. Brilliant photo-editing work..

Then I looked at some older pics of Gauri online (yeah, so I had a slow work day, sue me )

And I thought, hmmmm!! It does look pretty photoshopped doesn’t it?

I started thinking - if even I photoshop all my pictures before I put them online (for those of you who haven’t seen me offline, trust me, I’m perfectly hideous), why wouldn’t Vogue do the same with their covergirls, whoever they are?

It reminded me of a line, in a song, which I really love (commonly referred to as ‘The Sunscreen Song‘)

“Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.”

and also of this video, which I had originally seen on the Oprah show & which embedded itself in my head ever since:

I believe that beauty is in fact skin deep - but still I know I’m quite a slave to it.

I hope in the coming year, I mature enough to get beyond it all. Or at least, to rise a little from my present narcissistic state.

Quite a nice conclusion to seeing Gauri on the cover of Vogue, doncha think?!

A little over half a year ago, supermodel Gisele Bundchen made this controversial statement:

“Today no one is a virgin when they get married … show me someone who’s a virgin!”

Now, almost like the Hindi movies she acts in, our very own super Sushmita Sen, makes an almost “inspired” statement:

“no Indian has chastity or virginity any more, and having a pre-marital or post-marital affair is not wrong in society nowadays.”

Gisele found her kicking up a controversy with the Catholic Church, Sushmita Sen had a PIL filed against her (for “obscenity and lewd sexual comments”) by the seemingly more vigilant (hah!) moral police in our country.

I do not agree with Sushmita’s comments, the same way I didn’t agree with Gisele - but if there are several things I admire Sush for, one of them being her courage as a single woman to adopt a child.

Coincidentally, we were discussing this at a party last night - Sush’s single mother adoption and in general, how difficult it is to adopt a baby from India, especially for NRIs. I found out that apparently our over-populated country has more people wanting to adopt and less children available for adoption. There’s also apparently a long wait list for couples wanting to adopt babies.

Then today I find out about India’s CARA (Central Adoption Resource Agency) - who are ironically the agency established to regulate adoption procedures and make sure there is no corruption - themselves embroiled in a scandal.

Perhaps it’s not that children aren’t available for adoption. Maybe, like almost everything else in our country, they’re available if you have the money?

That’s the question a lot of people seem to be asking these days, judging by my system stats of why people are landing up at my blog.

If you are one such person, let me assure you, I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s been speculated by the media before (probably due to all the ‘massages’ Rahul apparently had on his ‘honeymoon’!) but as far as I’m concerned, I honestly don’t care if the boy is gay or not.

What is despicable is the the way he was portrayed to be an innocent victim “the poor boy was framed” after the whole country was well aware of all the facts (or most of them anyway) surrounding his almost death-by-drug-overdose. (There were even rumours Rahul had even applied for sainthood). It indeed is ridiculous the way politicians in this country think they can say anything and expect everyone to blindly buy it.

That’s what I think the whole marriage was anyway, a sham attempt to “clean” up his tarnished image (being found ODed on heroine, naked in a tub with 2 men, one of whom - Moitra, was an out-of-the-closet homosexual) in the media by marrying him off. Three months into the marriage, wifey dear was trying to get out claiming physical abuse, which she later denied. I wrote a tongue-in-cheek post called “Will you marry me” to Rahul at that time. I specify it was tongue-in-cheek, because some people miss sarcasm. Hey, the only Rahul I want to marry is this one.

Back to Mahajan Junior though, now marital problems are non deniable, 15 months down the line & divorce has very much been filed by Shweta, citing “incompatibility beyond reconciliation”.

And what about the original question - is the boy gay or not? There’s no official word out on that yet (though the day is young, soon to be ex-wifey may speak out yet).

But as I said, I don’t give two hoots if the boy is gay or not - though perhaps I would have a slightly better opinion of the boy if he was gay & just admitted it, rather than continuing to keep up a facade, especially after a probably sham marriage wherein he allegedly beat up wifey - all just for the sake of his place in the political circus!

Regardless of his sexual orientation though, while I hope he ’straightens’ up his act now that wifey has indeed left, I think we’ll see controversy surrounding him in the time to come.

Imagine this: A young marriageable girl from Tiruchi. The parents anxious to get a “good” husband. There must have been much rejoicing in the Jenita household when the boys family agreed to the marriage with their son, an Infosys employee. To make it better, the future son-in-law for the Jenita family was from the US - a “prestigious” alliance no doubt.

The young girl, though an MBA herself, must have no doubt been excited. And then there must have been the wedding. Again undoubtedly, dhoom-dhamal. The Jenitas must have proudly told family & neighbors about the “good catch” their daughter had got. Sweets. Saris. Flowers.

And then the day she had to depart for the US with her husband and his family. Tears. Her parents must have come home from the airport, taking solace in the wedding photographs, feeling now they had finally done all they could for their daughter.

Now she was “settled” in life.

At what stage did dreams turn into nightmares for the girl Smalin?

In a shocking case of dowry-harassment, a 23-year-old pregnant woman was beaten by her husband and in-laws and thrown out of a moving car, while she was in the US. The 7-month pregnant Smalin Jenita was comatose till a week ago, and had sustained 52 fractures while being harassed for dowry by her husband and his family in the US.

Perhaps we’ll never know. Perhaps we’ll never know if from day one she was harassed by Christy Daniels, the man who was meant to be her life mate. We’ll never even know how she got pregnant, whether she had a good union with her husband.

What we do know is that shortly after her marriage, Smalin got pregnant. And we do know that even in her seventh month of pregnancy, she was being harassed, beaten - and ultimately thrown out of a car! - by her husband and in-laws. We know she was abandoned in a hospital in the US in a coma. We know her family in India wasn’t even informed by the in-laws of her condition. We know it was only by the intervention of a kindly good Samaritan, a Pakistani doctor in this case, that these matters were brought to light. More details here & here.

(Smalin is currently in the ICU at Mehta hospital in Chennai. She and her unborn child are in stable condition. Besides the 52 fractures suffered, Smalin is now paralysed on the left side due to the brain injuries she suffered)

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My mum was recently praising the Gujju community and their encouraging young ones to take on “practical” work at a young age. The conversation was post a young Gujju boy coming to our house and inquiring if we needed a Dhobi (washing) service. After talking to him a bit, it turned out that he took over his father’s “business” and has been working hard to increase it’s base.

If a child is interested in following a parents footsteps, I think it’s great that the parents support & encourage the child in every way they can.

However this is really pushing things too far.

The doctor couple’s son, Dhileepan Raj, a tenth standard student, had performed a caesarean section on a woman in May last under the supervision of his parents.

This story is not one of parents encouraging their interested child into a field - if that were the case, they’d send him to medical college like they should have.

No, this horror story is one where the parents Dr. K. Murugesan and his doctor wife Gandhimathi,- who own and run a maternity hospital in the city of Manaparai in Tamil Nadu - wanted their son’s name in the Guinness Book of World Records as the youngest surgeon in the world!

So, without any regard to the life of Neela (the woman undergoing the caesarean), the father filmed the surgery and then showed it to the Indian Medical Association (IMA). More shockingly he also told them that it was not the first time the 15 year old boy had performed a surgery, but that the boy had been trained for the last three years - which would have meant he started training under his parents for surgery, with no authorized medical studies at the ripe old age of 12.

When the IMA notified higher authorities about this unethical behavior of the two parent doctors, the defiant father who has not expressed any regret, was quoted saying the IMA was “jealous” of the boy!

However any hopes for a Guinness Record has been dashed as they didn’t take into account that the entry actually wasn’t even eligible. The Guinness Book of World Records said these sorts of records would encourage “bad medicine”. And extremely Bad Medicine this definitely is. Meanwhile the Tamil Nadu section of the IMA has now banned the parent couple from practicing for a year (until the boy turns 16!).

Had I to give the final verdict, I would have been a lot harsher on the parents though by completely stripping them both of their licenses - how immoral, how illegal, how selfish of these people.

In a related note, would any Indian doctors reading this tell me if doctors in India have to take the Hippocratic Oath?

25 years ago, one man posted this message on an electronic bulletin board, as a simple suggestion to differentiate between jokes and non jokes posted on the e-board.

Since then, Professor Scott E. Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University, has become something of an icon himself. Though his academic achievements are many - and highly notable, the world is talking about him today, because of a simple three keystrokes which is a part of every persons life - either through SMS or eMail

The : - ) sign is so commonly used by our generation that I won’t be surprised if it’s proved that lots of people draw the sign sideways even on non-electronic media such as post-its and birthday cards (I do this, so do tell me I’m not the only freak on the planet!)

Meanwhile, Professor Fahlman has started an annual student contest for “innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication”. Something to : - ) indeed!

(Professor Fahlman, who’s pretty smiley himself, me thinks)