Asha & Friends

Besides recently releasing an album with a title that is the same as that of this blog entry and which includes duets that Asha Bhonsle has sung with the likes of Indian movie-star Sanjay Dutt and Australian cricketer Brett Lee, it seems that she is now preparing to record a song with British singing-star Robbie Williams (if a recent blog-post at World of Bhangra is to be believed).

After dominating the Bollywood playback scene, along with her siblings, for more than half a century, the lady's singing career is still going places and, at 73 years of age, she seems to have no retirement plans as of now.

To say the least, I am impressed!

Pidgin Poetry

This piece was written while Ra was working as an Assistant Manager at a tea-estate at Idukki, Permid, Kerala (not necessarily in that order!).

Actually, I wrote this late one night when high fever would not let me sleep.

I happened to lay my hands on a printout of a mail from Rahul that mentioned his experiences with snakes and leeches at the estate and I guess it kinda' went to my head, cranked it up and this is what came out!

Here goes:

Snakes n' leeches though not on verdant beaches;
n' when they snipe at him, 'Rahul_does' screeches!
Try as he might
to tell us it's delight
I'm sure it's fright...
that beats out the daylight
outta' our chappie so bright
(An' u always thought he was a tubelight... !!!!)
Well siree! he may resemble a squid
but our man's still the 'Braveheart of Permid'
With umbrella as lance
when he breaks into war-dance
Among all Idukki folk spreads the buzz
"Hail Rahul_does!!!!"

The Hidden Face of Evil

The cover story of the latest issue of a leading news magazine is titled 'Portrait of Evil'. It is about a businessman and his man-servant, accused of raping and killing many young children in a house owned by the former in Sector 31 (Nithari), NOIDA (a Delhi suburb, which otherwise lies in the state of Uttar Pradesh). It provides all the grisly details of the manner in which the two men are suspected to have gone about their dark deeds over the past two years or so, along with the details of the investigation carried out by the police.

Apparently, the servant lured the victims into the house and handed them over to his master, who sexually abused them and then handed them over back to the servant, who, in turn, meted out the same treatment to them, after killing them. Later, the servant dismembered the bodies and disposed them off by throwing them into a municipal drain.

All of this has been covered extensively by the print as well as the electronic media since December 29, 2006, when the duo were finally arrested.

The two men had reportedly been picked up for questioning several times before this, only to be let off upon the payment of bribes.

However, what the story makes no mention of and what many other sections of the media have not highlighted, is the fact that when the Uttar Pradesh government distributed blankets to the parents of the murdered children, some of them refused to accept these and others even tried to set fire to the blankets.

The anger and outrage might have seemed quite understandable and I might actually have empathised with the victims' family members, had I not known that each of the families had earlier accepted a cheque for Rs.2,00,000/- per murdered child, as compensation from the state government. Some of the parents did try to return the cheques, only to demand houses instead!

I wonder whether the serial rapists and killers should be described as more evil, or whether such a description would be more apt for the unfortunate children's own parents, who sold their offspring's souls for two lakh rupees each, without even a hint of remorse, at the hands of corrupt law-enforcers and politicians.

Good bye Tinkoo!

Tinkoo died on the evening of January 8, 2007. He was about one and a half months old.

Wherever he is now, I just want to thank him for loving me so much and so unconditionally and for bringing so much joy to my life, for the short period that he was with me! I also want to say sorry for not being with him when he needed me the most, for I just might have been able to do something to save him! I had gone out of town on a silly errand and he died while I was away. I wish I had not gone at all!

He had not been well for many days and was not responding well to the treatment by a veterinarian that I had been taking him to, for the past few days. I had decided to take him to another doctor and meant to do that on the very day that he died, but I had to go out of town. So, I asked my brother and mother to take him to the same veterinarian, as before, on monday and thought that I would take him to another doctor on tuesday. I had expected him to survive on that doctor's treatment for another day, but unfortunately that was not to be.

I have been contemplating revealing the identity of the veterinarian in question, in this blog entry, but am not sure if that would achieve any purpose. After all, my little Tinkoo is gone and anything I do now will not bring him back to life.

I hope God will soon give me the strength to be able to forgive all the people involved, including my own family members and even myself, who appear responsible right now for not being able to save my beloved Tinkoo!

Posted above, is Tinkoo's last photograph.