Pity the nation that has to silence its writers

I write this from Srinagar,Kashmir.This morning's papers say that i may be arrested on charges of sedition for what I have said at recent public meetings on Kashmir.I said what millions of people here say every day.I said what I,as well as other commentators have written & said over the years.Anybody who cares to read the transcripts of my speeches will see that they were fundamentally a call for justice.I spoke about justice for the people of Kashmir who live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world;for Kashmiri Pandits who live out the tragedy of having been driven out of their homeland;for Dalit soldiers killed in Kashmir whose graves i visited on garbage heaps in their villages in Cuddalore;for the Indian poor who pay the price of this occupation in material ways and who are now learning to live in terror of what is becoming a police state.

Yesterday I travelled to Shopian,the apple-town in South Kashmir which had remained closed for 47 days last year in protest against the brutal rape and murder of Asiya and Nilofer,the young women whose bodies were found in a shallow stream near their home and whose murderers have still not been brought to justice.

I met Shakeel,who is Nilofer's husband and Asiya's brother.We sat in a circle of people crazed with grief and anger who had lost hope that they would ever get 'insaf' - justice - from India,and now believed that Azadi - freedom - was their only hope.I met young stone pelters who had been shot through their eyes.I travelled with a young man who told me how three of his friends,teenagers in Anantnag district,had been taken into custody and had their finger-nails pulled out as punishment for throwing stones.

In the papers some have accused me of giving 'hate-speeches',of wanting India to break up.On the contrary,what I say comes from love and pride.It comes from not wanting people to be killed,raped and imprisoned or have their finger-nails pulled out in order to force them to say they are Indians.It comes from wanting to live in a society that is striving to be a just one.Pity the nation that has to silence its writers for speaking their minds.Pity the nation that needs to jail those who ask for justice,while communal killers,mass murderers,corporate scamsters,looters,rapists,and those who prey on the poorest of the poor,roam free.


Arundhathi Roy
October 26,2010

As from "The Hindu",Ms.Roy's response to her sedition charges.

NEW YORK - The flip side of the coin.

New York,the latest John Abraham starrer,tats how I spent my weekend,drooling over Abs.I love those dimples and am sure a million more gals do!(sorry Bips!).Well,at first I was skeptical about the idea of a movie,with my jam packed schedules ( reason for the long intervals in my darling blog ) I really didn't want to waste the one Saturday night I was free.I assumed,I would be drowned in another hopeless Bollywood love triangle!!Love is not my speciality and love triangles make no more sense to me than those calculus laws my math teacher gave her life trying to teach me.[ I still sympathize her! ]

In spite,of my deep rooted hatred for triangles,( courtesy : the countless nights I spent mugging math theorems! ),I decided,what the heck,I am holding my seat for this one!For reasons obvious ;) . Once in theatre,I must say,I was in for a big surprise!The movie did have a triangle,but thankfully not complicated enough to revive my long forgotten emotions associated with math class torture.It was about a much more formidable and grave issue - TERRORISM.

Director,Kabir Khan has poignantly told the tale of how the lives of many innocent people changed after 9/11.Hundreds of innocent people,a particular sect especially,were detained post 9/11 ,tortured and stripped of their humanity under the pretext of investigation and interrogation,with no proof at all!!They were later released on the basis of lack of evidence,but did they get back their stripped dignity,is a question everyone associated would like to overlook.The movie was an eye-opener and served as a window to show the other side of this despicable terrorism.It showed me the profound ways in which all the different laws all over the world have in so many instances failed us with impunity,and at great cost of enormous human suffering of innocent people!

To read about the survivors of the post 9/11 carnage,as also the families of those men,detained for long years under terror laws,I can't,but cry at the stories of bleak suffering!Jail is no fun amusement park to visit,and to be there for no reason at all is appalling!I would be lying if I said,I did not hold my very own biased opinions on terrorism,though not an expert in the field. [ Thanks to the trend of vulturous journalism! ] After the movie,any terrorist attack I read/hear of,I think of the terrorist.What horrendous suffering did the poor chap undergo in his life.What pushed him over the abyss.

The fight against terrorism,both illegal and legal,[ I regard being terrorised in jails an equally horrible form of terrorism] is not someone else's agenda.It's about us and our children,we each carry a responsibility on our shoulders.Let us stop this growing violence!![ My 5 year old nephew knows more about guns than any of my colleagues for chrissake! ]Why can't we revive the Gandhian laws?

Yes,I agree,you can't change anything about this morbid scenario at one shot,but you can try,by being part of the solution,or at the very least by actively ensuring you are not part of the problem!Give up violence in every form,yup,verbal violence is equally dangerous.Polls show that most college shoot-outs happen because of constant discouragement from peers.

I'd like to quote my grandfather here,a person I have great respect and regard for.[ He is no more.] "Each of us does not like something.The important thing is to not act on that dislike.Or you will have given in to evil,and evil only reaps more evil,which is meaningless."

I conclude by saying,"The world is not incapable of humanitarian compassion and empathy,its capacity to trample human rights and to pretend nothing disconcerting happened is equally immense!''Let us be aware.Let us be the solution.For,after all,we make up the world!

For those interested,you can read,"The Guantanamo files'' by Andy Worthington.
http://www.amazon.com/Guantanamo-Files-Stories-Detainees-Americas/dp/0745326641

For not the bookish ones,you can simply just watch the movie.
Download Link: http://www.funbolo.com/bollywood/newyork_movie.htm

The Age of the Machines

Tra la la la (my ringtone)

Hello...(sleepily)

Hey Jan...check out the new sony ericsson phone gal,w995a,its got a 8.1 megapixel cam man!!or do u think i should go for nokia-E75?

Tat was my dear friend happily chirping away about her latest obsession...yeah,about 75 billion neurons(out of the 100 billion tat is there!) in her brain is permanently thinking of which cell phone she wants now!!

With the big risk of sounding superannuated (which I am not! ) I wish to share my views of the modern generation.Here goes...I look around me and see that we,modern men,have given birth to something here!Technology is no longer used for our service,not for our convenience either.Technology has become a statement!!

We are constantly wanting and getting something more advanced,something more complex and most importantly something more independent with every tick of the clock!!By independent,I mean something that is almost able to think for itself.Do you realize the magnitude of the situation?We have given birth to an evolution!We have successfully breast-fed her and are nurturing her childhood now.My guess is,it wont be long for the adolescent,rebel to walk out on us.People,we are in a Michael Crichton novel!Wake up!!Our time is running out.The end is just around the corner!From the way I see it,we are already in the end of the block,just waiting to make that turn!

Not following me?Think I'm just another cynic?I'll explain what evolution is to you.

Evolution is exponential...For example,

The first telephone was invented by Sir.Philipp Reis in the year 1860.It could cover only a distance of 100 meters.

Sir.Alexander Graham Bell developed on it and 16 yrs later in 1876,introduced the telephone which could cover a distance of 6-8 kilometers on an average!

In 1877,one year later,Sir.Thomas Alva Edison succeeded in enabling telephone calls to be made over large distances by creating stronger electrical impulses.

In 1884, the first long-distance line was laid from New York to Boston and by 1900 there were automatic telephone switchboards almost everywhere in the world.

That is,it took 16 years for the phone to be improvised from speaking just to your neighbor,to speaking to someone in the next block,while it took almost the same time for the phone users to graduate to speaking across countries!Getting our hands on a mobile phone did take a while though [ It was not until 1983 that Motorola presented the first commercial mobile telephone in the world, the "Dyna TAC 8000X". ]But after that block,there is no looking back!!Another 27 years have elapsed and now the mobile phone is not just a phone anymore!!Its amazing what a phone can do now-a-days!From photography,to cinematography,to compositions,to calculations,to anything else you can think of!It can all be done!I can speak to my brother who is insanely far off,in a completely different time zone,at the blink of an eye!!!

It is a feat!I applaud all the great men who are responsible for this!From 20 yrs of research to get me connected to the next block...it took the same 20 years to get all the above said amazing things done!!So mathematically,the speed of invention is
Xⁿ [n=2 or more,x=no. of years]

Even as you read,some brilliant scientist is busy creating something more advanced than what we already have.Once we give these machines a mind of their own [which we already have,to some extent! ] their evolution will spark off at an alarming speed and God forbid what will happen![I suggest you read Micheal Crichton's Prey,he shares my veiws on this one.]

I don't intend to start a revolution against all of the great minds nurturing this evolution,nor do I intend on persuading the human race to stop this insaneness![Homo sapiens are the most non-persuasive of all species,in my regard.]

I want to warn all the poor souls like me out there!Lets pray,hope,wish or do whatever we do just before our big " I have not studied a word " exam,that this Spielberg movie we are in,has a happy ending.

P.S : Tom Cruise,you got to be reading this!