Nim Dreme's unlearning

Tsering Droima/Pic Don Sebastian

To,
The Headmaster
Government Primary School, Mohan Camp

Sub: An application for leave

Sir,

With due respect I would like to inform you that I have been suffering from fever since last night.
Therefore, kindly grant me leave for One (1) day only.

Yours faithfully,
Name: Nim Dreme
Class Four (4)
Hall No: Fourteen (14)
Date: 19/11/07


*****************************************************

Seven months after Nim Dreme wrote this leave application to headmaster Y Kishore Singh, it was still embedded on the first page of the attendance register of Government Primary School, Mohan Camp, Nyukmadung. Arunachal may be India’s rendezvous with the first rays of Sun, but it refuses to shrug off slumber. It embraces the snail’s pace and refuses to toe the world which moves on.

This is the state which late Marxist ideologue EMS once described thus: “the land which India claims is India’s and China claims is their’s”. A volcano of controversy erupted then.

Don’t know whether the Marxist doyen ever set foot on this mountainous terrain which is overwhelmingly green, fascinatingly pristine and tucked in the warp of a timeless era, with only the camouflage of olive green military fatigue spoiling its serene charm.

Nim Dreme and his 55 school mates, predominantly kids of migrant Nepali labourers who toil to put roads in shape and remove the trees and roadblocks that hinder traffic with alarming regularity, share an attendance register and two teachers.

Y Kishore Singh hails from Balia, Uttar Pradesh, and his lone colleague is a local lass –the dazzling Tsering Droima. Between them they dabble with Social Studies, Maths, Drawing, English, all and sundry...
Nim Dreme and his school mates get the first taste of knowledge from them.

Near the notice board in front of the school a bill board proclaims:

बेह्थर सिक्षा भरपूर प्यार
बच्चे का पहला अधिकार

That seems unlikely. After Standard V, Nim Dreme would have to walk miles to go to the upper primary school.
Tough luck, but perhaps Dreme’s destiny would be to be a better human being, untouched by the wrong notions of worldly gains and far ahead of the fake pride of “doing well in life”.

Nim Dreme’s wisdom belongs to the virgin woods and lofty heights of Arunachal. Priceless.

A letter from Granpa Castro

Perhaps this letter posted on Granma's web site would be clicked
widely by an army of non-English speaking surfers.

That could be just an amusement tactic to be part of history, but the icon who
spurred the mouse movement has seen unparalelled adulation, survived assassination attempts without parallels from world's military might and curiously enough is even reviled by a section of his own people-- Cubans.

Castro is an enduring symbol of resistance, thwarting the machinations of 9 American presidents to topple a tiny island regime, defying the mightiest military in the world and outliving the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which once rallied behind him and later crumbled to their cold war era common enemy.

As Castro decided that being even a nominal head of a nation mostly shadowed by his larger than life halo itself is a daunting physical task, Cuba, as a nation, may not follow the trajectory of a directionless kite.

It can still stay afloat, as Castro did in testing times. It would not have been possible for even Castro to show such cathartic defiance against giant odds had it not been for Cuba.

In his letter to fellow countrymen, Castro does not say good bye. His maverick legacy cannot attempt to bid adieu to a valiant dream.

And the legacy of Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz can only be called Cuba.

No other name suits it.

War against conviction

A farce being enacted in the run-up to the US Presidential poll is the way opinion is converging on the war on Iraq. That is the farce of the so-called great American dream, read nation.

Barring Barack Obama, most front-runners for the Republican and Democratic nominee front-runners solidly backing what a certain Texan cowboy fondly refers to as an act to purge an axis of evil.

It was also put across, in a discreet way that it was a war to wipe out terror from the face of earth. Notice the striking similarity of the rhetoric ; War on terror, Iraq War –II.

It was all a scramble for oil. Only, the aggressors had the finger on the trigger and the targets were rag-tag armies which reigned over lawless lands and overwhelmingly innocent civilians.

That was all fine then, but when the scenes turned chaotic and the emotive appeal of Saddam’s hanged torso electrified suicide squads across the Islamic fiefdoms in the Middle East, body bags began to puncture the invincibility of American military might.

In wars the U.S. has fought supposedly to help mankind, they have run into a comic situation without an easy fix. In Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The issue is that they could not digest the fact that the demon of chaos they unleashed on fragile nations – those ruled by iron fist or medieval moorings but without a social ethos – could not be domesticated by mere military might.

And the U.S. is incapable of accepting a bigger picture – that they went wrong as a nation.

Now, only Barack Obama drags the Iraq war, or the initial show of support for it, into the presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton displays lack of conviction when she proclaims she was convinced about the war but was let down by the Texan cowboy style operations in Iraq.

She should have known that as a Senator, she is at least expected to understand that cow boys can never become statesmen.

Super Tuesday may not have been a verdict on this, but there is definitely some GPS-enabled soul searching through the corridors of its limited history that the American public, its foot soldiers in the Western world, the presidential nominees and Democrats as well as Republicans need to do on its war policy.

I, me, mine .gone

premub@gmail.com

Hang on

There would be simultaneous action on this blog as well as in another site

www.premub.com

cheers

Of Kirpan, British Airways & matters of faith

Carrying of kirpan could be a basic tenet of Sikhism, but you just can’t carry it any where. That’s what 31-year-old Ripudaman Singh found out when he was arrested while visiting the US embassy in Copenhagen in 2004. A court now has upheld his conviction for violating Danish arms laws.

Religious affiliation should be confined home and places of workship. If it spills over to the streets, classrooms and workplaces there is a huge possibility of clashes. And those clashes wouldn’t be just of civilizations, it would be of cultures as well as perceptions. A knife may be a religious symbol, but it is definitely offending for many.

So symbols of offence in the tag of religion breeds animosity in a public place rather than the avowed theme of love and brotherhood which almost all religions claim to propagate and rarely do.

How many Sikhs would you see sporting kirpans in a busy Chandigarh avenue?
So why do you want to flaunt your religious affiliations? The only reason could be that you are unsure of it.

A British Muslim teacher was shown the door for wearing the niqab. The decision was challenged, but a tribunal upheld it.

Similarly, British Airways packed off its employee for wearing a necklace with a cross. Not enough. Rather unfair. Because the airline allows employees to wear bangles, turban and headscarves. Will BA allow a kirpan onboard?

Since anything and everything related to Hindus are symbols, most of them offending for faithless souls, nothing need to be told about that.
Flaunting your religion may not be the ideal thing to do, except some in medieval societies etched in modern history. Like oil rich Saudi. And the lawless, porous Waziristan on the Pak-Afghan border.

Redemption is a long way off.

Crocodile tears for Azhar

Who decides the fate of sportspersons found guilty of misconduct on and off the field? Sports bodies, governments or the law of the land. Ideally it should be a combination of all, since the framework of laws did not clearly envisage situations like match fixing.
So a cricketer like Mohammad Azharuddin, who is a class act to watch while on a flow, was slapped a life ban in 2001 on match fixing charges, along with Ajay Sharma. Ajay Jadeja and Nikhil Chopra got a five year ban.
The probe was conducted by the country’s top investigator K Madhavan. Obviously, there’s little scope for an error.
Now given the intriguing politics that stalks the Board of Control for Cricket in India and its uneasy love-hate relationship with ICC, the BCCI has decided to honour the tainted captain.
The reasons are innocuous: BCCI says other cricket boards do not come down so heavily on its erring stars. If that is the case, the way out is not to award a honor for an erring cricketer but to take up the matter at appropriate levels so that there are no double standards.
What if the court exonerates the fallen Indian idol in future? Well then give him a hero’s welcome.

But statements of various BCCI functionaries on the issue goes off track to mention contracts awarded to South African and London based firms. So clearly the matter is not coming to the rescue of a fallen icon, but the lure of money. Not done.

The Generation X hyperbole

Gandhigiri is sweeping the country. For starters, it is the Gandhian equivalent of Dadagiri. For the discerning, its just a hyperbole revolving around popular Bollywood flick Lage Raho Munnabhai.
Munnabhai is the local loafer who thinks the significance of October 2 is that it is a dry day.
But then you just don’t expect small-time connoisseurs of Santhara (Country liquor) to give a lecture on Gandhian economy.
The new generation has finally connected with Mahatma Gandhi through Munnabhai’s latest incarnation, according to a section of the media.
It is not the case.
Generation X has no urge to connect with a social icon of the past. And no compelling reason too.
They are just celebrating the Sanjay Dutt flick and the unwarranted media attention that comes with it.
Gandhi would have no reason to complain, though. It doesn’t hurt anyone.