Chicago with the GSA Family

Reflections. Short and fat, wavy and bulging, they were all around me. Standing under the Cloud Gate (or “The Bean” as it is popularly known) in Chicago’s Millenium Park, I was fulfilling a dream that I had since the day I had seen pictures of the stainless steel outdoor sculpture. Based on a design by Indian-born artist Anish Kapoor, the giant reflective structure could be called a photographers’ paradise and I had long wanted to shoot it. But that was only one of the many dreams that were being fulfilled during the Graduate Student Organization-organized Thanksgiving trip to Chicago.

The four day GSA trip started early on the gloomy Thanksgiving morning from NJIT. By the time we reached Chicago at night the mercury had dropped to 26 degrees Fahrenheit and most cafes and restaurants near our hotel had closed. However, thanks to a Dunkin Donuts and a Seven-Eleven within the block, everyone could soon settle down in their respective rooms. Well, everyone except the GSA President who had been “accidentally” allotted the same room as a honeymoon couple and he realized it only after he walked in. But that’s another story.

The next morning dawned bright and sunny, and soon we were in the bus once more, headed for the Museum of Science and Industry. On our way we crossed the Chicago River, saw the magnificent skyline, and drove along the shore of the majestic lake Michigan. Chicago, I felt, is a mix of the best things from New York and Washington DC since it has both open spaces and a lovely skyline. The museum itself was seen in a hurried manner, for GSA had given us CityPasses and we had a lot of other things to see. Among the things we saw there, a display of Christmas trees from around the globe, a US Navy submarine and an IMAX dome theatre show on the Hubble space telescope deserve special mention.

Since my childhood days, I have always wanted to see an aquarium but never got around to seeing one. That wish was destined to be fulfilled in Chicago. The Shedd Aquarium was the next on our route where we spent the rest of the day in a fish-watching frenzy. We also saw a 4-D movie and a live show with performing dolphins, seals and beluga whales. When we emerged from the aquarium it was already dark and the illuminated Chicago skyline stretched out sparkling beyond the lakeshore in front of us. It was a mesmerizing sight. I live near New York and I have seen Boston, Philadelphia, Las Vegas and Washington DC in the last couple of years. Each city has its own charm, but I feel as far as skylines are concerned, Chicago has the most unique skyline out of these cities. After gaping at the lights and taking pictures for some time, we rode the bus back to the hotel.

We had almost spent a day and still had a lot of other places to see. The next day was going to be busy, but that did not deter me and two friends from going out in search of some special dinner. Pizzeria Uno was only a few blocks away from our hotel, but the walk seemed a torture in the sub-freezing temperature and Chicago’s infamous wind. I had ordered an iced coffee to look cool and that compounded my miseries. Our problems did not end once we reached Pizzeria Uno. “Want to sit in? The waiting time is two hours. For take-outs it is just one hour,” said the girl at the counter. We chose the latter, but since the place was too crowded to sit and wait for an hour, another long hour of wandering about the freezing streets ensued. Eventually when we did get the deep dish pizza, we fought among ourselves to carry the hot box as we walked back to the hotel. I and three hungry friends could not finish a medium sized pie for dinner, which is pretty impressive even if you consider the fact that the three were girls on diet.

The next morning started with a cab ride to “The Bean” in the Millennium Park followed by the shooting spree described earlier. Later we walked to the Chicago Field Museum by the road along Lake Michigan. The weather, although cold and windy, was gloriously sunny and so the walk was very enjoyable. Our visit to the Field Museum was another touch-and-go affair. We had a Panini lunch at the museum café and then visited Sue, the most complete T-Rex fossil in the world. After that we visited a real Egyptian tomb and looked at some stuffed birds and animals from Asia and Africa. We left at four and took a cab to Willis Tower. There was no time to see the Planetarium.

Willis Tower, formerly known as Sears Tower, is the tallest building in the United States. When we arrived at Willis Tower, there was still daylight. I had always wanted to see Chicago from Skydeck – the observation deck on the 103rd floor of the building. It was my idea to choose a time when we could both see the daylight and the night view. However, my plan would have failed pathetically if we did not have CityPasses. As we stood in the serpentine queue below the building, an official called for visitors with CityPasses and ushered us into the elevator ahead of the queue. Through the closing elevator doors, we heard the official tell the rest of the visitors that their wait time would be two hours. Ours was only a few minutes though. After a security check and another minute-long elevator ride, we found ourselves on top of the world. The sun was low in the sky and the place was heavily crowded. We took a look at Chicago and the lake from every side as the sun went down, saw the sunset and then proceeded to the most unique experience of all – The Ledge.

The Ledge at Skydeck is a glass box protruding out of the wall of Willis Tower into the sky. Or rather, there are three boxes like that. They are like tiny hanging balconies with glass floors. Standing in one of these boxes, one not only gets a 360 degree view of that side of Chicago but also gets the sickening feeling of peering between one’s feet and seeing nothing but a thousand feet of air. Scary as it may seem, it was evident that the glass floors are very, very strong because the boxes were filled like cans of sardines with tourists. We squeezed in somehow, saw the lights come on in Chicago and then slowly slipped out. As we walked out of the building, we noticed that the queue had grown even longer.

By the time we returned to our hotel, the Red Roof Inn, we were tired. Initially we had planned to go and see Navy Pier, but then laziness got the better of us. Also, all of us had a sudden urge to eat Chinese and so after a brief walk around the Chicago River, we walked to a nearby Chinese restaurant and had a delicious dinner. I and my friends ended the day with watching a movie on one of our laptops. Next morning the bus started early, and nearly everyone slept the first part of the journey. Later, however, as energy levels increased, we had a lot of fun playing games and singing songs in the bus. We reached NJIT at ten in the night.

When GSA had first proposed the Chicago trip for Thanksgiving, I had been sceptical about its success. “It will be too cold up there during Thanksgiving,” I had said, “and besides, the 15-hour long bus journey each way will be a pain.” What I had not considered at the time is the importance of spending the holiday with friends. During the actual trip, however, the cold and other problems took a backseat as we enjoyed the warmth of friendship and saw a new city with the only family members that we have in this home away from home. This trip made me realize once more that in spite of our differences, we at NJIT are all part of one big family, and this trip was one big family get together. And what’s a better way to spend a Thanksgiving break than spending it with family members?

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

I have been busy.

Too busy to blog. Too busy to shop on Black Friday. Too busy to upload photos on my photoblog. Too busy even to read my favourite blogs and comment on them.

But I wasn’t too busy to go watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 on the day of its release, and to put it bluntly, the movie rocks. This is exactly what a Harry Potter movie should be like.

I would have been skeptical if this same opinion had come from another reviewer, because the last movie by the same director was everything a Harry Potter movie should not be. With unnecessary deviations from the storyline, large chunks of vital plot points left out, and important characters and details reduced to mere passing references, David Yates reduced the gripping sixth story into an intolerable headache. This time, however, by splitting up the story into two movies, he has been able to do justice to the little incidents that make the book such an interesting read. Another major plus point of the movie is the absence of Michael Gambon and his insufferable performance as a hot-headed Albus Dumbledore.

To be honest, the expectations were high. They are always unfairly high for a director directing a Harry Potter movie, because there are people like me who would go splitting hairs about specific dialogs and what a particular character’s hairstyle looks like. But at the end of the two and a half hours, even I had to say that I was as satisfied with the movie as I was with Chris Columbus’s first two movies.

Right from the initial seven Potters sequence, to the teen trio’s adventure in the ministry of magic, to Harry and Hermione’s visit to Godric’s Hollow, Harry finding the sword, and finally the happenings at Malfoy Manor and Luna’s house – every scene was nearly as I had imagined. There was the added bonus of a fantastic animated story-telling sequence within the movie. I won’t say much about the plot, although I doubt if there is anyone who hasn’t read the book and is still worried about spoilers while reading this blog. Rupert Grint, Emma Watson and Tom Felton are magnificent as usual in their acting, and even Daniel Radcliffe seems to get the hang of it now.

Was it perfect? No. The failure to mention the taboo on Voldemort’s name left a vital plot point unexplained. I hoped to see the paintings on Luna’s ceiling. Wormtail was supposed to die because Harry had once saved his life – the film failed to mention that. Most importantly, the semi-nude kissing scene between Harry and Hermione was totally uncalled for. I know what the book says, and it could have been shown differently considering it is only a children’s movie. But then, no movie is ever perfect. Some only come very close to perfection.

Like Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 did.

The Customary Durga Puja Post

Over the last one month and a half, I moved into a new apartment, started teaching a full course for the first time and worked on my first research paper. I spent the weekends buying stuff for my apartment and spent my free time doing some other work that I do not want to discuss here just yet. Also, a free one-month membership from Netflix hijacked my lifestyle completely and hopelessly and made me realize once more that blogging is perhaps the lowest priority work in my life. Still, I promised to write a blog post before Durga Puja to one of my half-dozen regular readers, and this festival seems a good subject to restart blogging.

But what will I write? I wrote all about my childhood memories before. I also wrote about seeing Puja in Kolkata, in Hooghly, in New Jersey and seeing idols being built in Kumortuli. Besides, some of my friends with similar childhood memories wrote beautiful blog posts and I am left struggling to find a story that is new.

When I was very small, I lived in a house that was almost across the road from the local puja pandel. As a result, I and my cousin Ananda got to spend a lot of time at the pandel, admiring the idols and bursting caps in our little silver coloured pistols. During this time, I became aware of a lot of facts about the goddess and her children by acutely observing them at that pandel and elsewhere.

For instance, Ganesha was badly in need of a workout.

It may have been the consequence of trying to satisfy his elephantine taste-buds, but it could be seen that Ganesha was not making things easy for his ride – the mouse. Okay, the mouse was sometimes the size of a small dog, but you would still clearly see the helplessness of his situation when you looked at his master. During pandel-hopping, one of the things that I watched keenly was the size of the mouse that Ganesha had there.

Then Kartik was the dandy man. Right from his choice of pet, to his wardrobe and hairstyle, everything reeked of show-off. The detail with which the peacock was made told a lot about the skill of the artist and the budget of the organizers. Sometimes, Kartik did not wear a crown to show off his hairstyle. Ganesha also did not usually wear a crown, but that was probably because no crowns fitted his head. Kartik wore ornate dresses in some places, but usually he was bare bodied. Sometimes he wore a golden fishnet shirt, just to be fashionable. A person in a glistening silk and gold dress holding a silver bow and arrow riding a peacock – no wonder the gods made him the commander of their army. No enemy can remain calm after facing such a shining adversary.

The daughters were more conservative looking, and honestly speaking, more respect-inspiring for me. I mean which child really cares about wars and armies and success in business? But even as a child I understood the basic necessities of life: money and food and marks in the exams. As a grad student, these things are still of utmost importance in my life, so I better not crack any jokes about the nice ladies and their avian pets. Only, as a child I often wondered how come the owl never ate the mouse when they came together. I also noticed that although Lakshmi and Saraswati looked almost like twins, Lakshmi had got her mother’s complexion while Saraswati seemed to have got her father’s. That conclusion wasn’t easy to reach, of course, because the father was rarely visible with the rest of the family. However, where he was visible, it was evident where Saraswati’s white complexion and Ganesha’s pot-belly came from. The Shiva I saw was such a nice amiable looking gentleman – sort of a long-haired laughing Buddha with a pair of Hercule Poirot moustaches – that it was difficult to imagine him as capable of any kind of dance, let alone being the destroyer of the universe. He appeared to be the gentle husband completely overshadowed by his wife.

His wife. Ma Durga. The destroyer of the buffalo-demon. The daughter of the house visiting her father. Hence the centre of attraction.

She was the one we children stared at for hours. Balanced atop a lion, she held weapons in her ten hands. She had already impaled the buffalo-demon Mahishasura at most pandels. A mutilated buffalo with a severed head lay at her feet. Sometimes her expression was angry, and sometimes sweet and calm. With flowing curly dark hair visible under her crown, the three-eyed goddess was the definition of unearthly beauty. Our favourite pastime was trying to identify her weapons, and matching which of the weapons were common between different idols. We got particularly excited if one weapon was a live snake that was biting Mahishasura.

I did not realize it at the time, but now when I think about it, it does not seem strange at all that a child, when told that a three-eyed, ten-handed, lion-riding woman is his (and everybody else’s) mother, believes it. The most beautiful woman in the world, protecting me from all evil and doing everything with five times the efficiency of a normal two-handed person. Sometimes angry and sometimes smiling. That’s how I would have described my mother as well. So what was so different about the goddess?

Probably that is why she always seemed so close, so beloved. That would explain the lump in my throat on the last day of the festival. That would explain what I feel like sitting here in “the Land of the Free” on Panchami evening typing out childhood memories. There are some things that do not lose their charm even when we grow up, and the festival of Durga Puja is one of those things for me. With each passing year spent outside Bengal, the desire to be part of the puja in my hometown grows more intense in my heart. I want to go and stand at Ma Durga's feet and look up into her eyes. I want to be awed by her weapons, her ornaments and her heavenly beauty, just like my childhood days.

Liberty tries to be impressive too, but she only has two hands.

Twitter's Tale

God has a twisted sense of humour, because there is no other way you can explain my meeting with Twitter.

While returning from college, I either get off at the station nearest to my house and walk home through the park, or get off at the next station (if I have some work there) and walk home over the road. It can’t be both. It was never both until last Tuesday. On Tuesday, I alighted at the next station with a friend who had some work there, and as he was returning, I just boarded the returning train with him. “I’ll return to my station by train,” I thought. “The walk through the park is better.”

And while in the park I noticed an unusually shaped dark mass among the leaves under a tree. I could have easily trodden over the small thing if it had not uttered chirping sounds. When I looked properly, it was a baby bird. As I stooped to get a better look, a tiny beak opened into a yellow gaping mouth that could mean only one thing in any language.

“Food!” it said. I wondered what to do.

On one hand, if I left it there, it could be trampled by humans or mauled by dogs. That spot is very popular with dog walkers. On the other hand, taking it home would almost certainly mean removing it from nature forever. I could not be certain the parents were still feeding it, and surely they would not be able to lift it back into their nest. Death was certain for a bird on the ground. But I had no idea what to feed it, and so I called up a friend who looked up what to feed a baby robin on Google. Then I carried the little creature back home in my hand, King-Kong style.

Feeding it was not easy. While I boiled an egg and thawed some frozen fish, the chick decided to explore the kitchen on foot. A little later, I was mashing the hot boiled egg and boiled fish with cold milk and raisins soaked in water and desperately trying to bring everything to room temperature (that is more variety of food than I eat in one meal). Finally I placed the bird in a tissue-lined deep Tupperware container that it could not jump out of and tried to feed it. But it would not open its mouth for me. After some time I gave up and went upstairs. I updated my Facebook profile with all this news and was instantly bombarded with suggestions. None of that was needed, though, because the bird decided to eat whatever I offered once hunger defeated fear at dinnertime.

A friend said one of her professors keeps abandoned birds and she would ask him to take this one. I decided to take it to the school the next day to hand it over. And so, as I packed my own lunch, I packed a tiny lunchbox with the bird’s food. I kept the bird on the window of my bedroom at night and went to sleep.

When I woke up with frantic chirping in my room, it was 5:45 by my watch and darkness was just fading. I was probably being told to fetch the early worms, but I just cursed the bird under my breath and tried to sleep until my alarm went off at 7:00. Then I got up, got ready for school, fed the bird, fed myself and just as I was about to leave, the friend called to let me know that the professor was out of town. So I was back to my earlier dilemma.

I had done some reading about birds the previous night and a website suggested leaving baby birds in trees or makeshift nests near their original nest often caused the parents to resume feeding them. However, the sooner it was done after rescuing the bird, the better. So I put the chick in a “nest” that I made out of a cardboard box lined with foam and tissue, and put it in a tree near where I had found it. After I went to school I updated this on my Facebook profile.

Over the next few hours, I was berated, booed and criticized by friends on Facebook and Gtalk who accused me of “writing a certain death sentence” for the bird, and also told me what a more compassionate person (such as Gerald Durrell) would have done. By late afternoon I was feeling so guilty and overcome with visions of the chick being devoured by hawks that I left for home early to check on the bird. I could see the box from afar where I had left it, but when I came near and peeked into it, it was empty.

Something told me the chick was alive. So a thorough search ensued which first revealed the original nest on a branch just out of my reach, and then revealed my chick in the grass about 100 yards from the tree I left it on. As I reached for it, it opened its mouth and asked for food. I couldn’t tell whether the parents had fed it, so I put it back in the box and brought it home. As the tired bird fell asleep after a hearty meal, I put a net over the face of the box and considered my options. But before that I gave it a name. Since I was not sure about its gender, I decided to call it Twitter.

I was to realize over the next few days that giving something a name is a sure-shot way of falling in love with it.

Over the next three days I tried various methods to get rid of Twitter. I took him to the university police, the SPCA and some other humane society. Everybody kept redirecting me to somebody else, and finally one of them gave me an address five miles away and told me to drop off my bird there. Everyone also made it amply clear that they primarily handled stray cats and dogs and it was my fault that I had picked up a bird. I wasn’t sure whether they would feed Twitter the way I was doing, or feed him to one of their stray cats. So I decided to stick around with him until the professor returned. By this time, I was an expert in reading Twitter’s gestures and Tweets. My friends jokingly called him my child and tried to convince me to keep him. But I had my objections – I spend the whole day at the university. I go off to Edison on weekends. I go to India for a month every winter. So keeping him permanently was out of the question – Twitter would have to be given away. But before that, I wanted to try one last experiment.

On early Saturday morning, I took Twitter to the park with to put him back in his original nest. I had not done it yet because I was afraid of scaring the other chicks that I had seen there. Now as I climbed on a chair and put Twitter into his nest, I realized just how twisted God’s sense of humour is.

The nest was empty. No sign of the two chicks that I had seen the day before.

As Twitter sat in his nest, I sat a little distance away and kept watch. Gradually he got bored and came out onto the branch, before jumping down and landing softly onto the grass below. I realized the other chicks couldn’t have learnt to fly either, and would surely be around if they were alive. Over the next three hours, Twitter roamed around in the grass mostly alone. The adult robins approached him a couple of times but they maintained their distance. There was no sign of the other chicks, and I was sure they had been eaten by predators.

Wikipedia says robin chicks have a 25% survival rate in the wild. By a strange quirk of fate, Twitter was the first one to fall out of the nest, and he was the only one alive.

At the end of three hours I decided to take him home. He seemed relieved to see me and remained perched on my finger as I walked home. I also shot this video of one of his first attempts at flight.

I had to leave him at home for a few hours on Saturday evening and Sunday morning as I went shopping. Every time I re-entered the house, I was greeted by his joyous tweets. Everything seemed to be going nicely. But all stories do not have a happy ending.

Last night as I was about to take him downstairs for dinner, he fluttered out of my hand and landed on my chair with a thud, before fluttering down to the floor. This did not seem alarming at the time, because this was usual behaviour. However, that thud must have been different, because he was not the same anymore. I could feel he was in pain, and hardly ate anything. He didn’t tweet much and just lowered his head and slept in his box. I knew what was coming. However, being prepared did not prevent me from crying when I woke up in the morning to find that Twitter had not chirped at daybreak, and was sitting still and limp in his box. He was still alive when I picked him up, but very relaxed – not his usual clawing and fluttering self. He did not ask for food, nor ate anything when offered, and within fifteen minutes, he slowly lay down, curled up, and breathed his last as I caressed his little head and neck. I could tell the precise moment when he died as my mother consoled me over phone and told me not to feel guilty for his fall the previous night.

How does one explain these six days? Was it just coincidence or destiny? Being a Hindu, I would probably like to believe that we had shared some bond in a previous birth, or will do so in some future one. Although I was sad as I buried him in the garden, I knew what happened was the best thing that could have happened to him. Twitter was a wild bird. I would not have liked to see that free creature spend his life behind bars. I don’t know for sure, but I would like to believe that he has gone to a place where he can be free. At least until God decides to play a little cruel joke on someone else.

Two Years in America

Yesterday I went to the airport with a couple of friends to pick up three new students who arrived from India. As I stood waiting for the delayed Jet airways flight with a sheet of paper announcing the name of my university, I remembered that I arrived in a similar fashion exactly two years ago.

I landed in the US on 13th August 2008. True, my arrival was very different from this – I arrived with my cousin sister-in-law and my cousin brother took me to his home. I didn’t have to worry about food, money, phone or any other basic needs for the first few days. Yet, something about these girls reminded me of my first day in this country. The apprehensive glance, the genuine wonder at seeing a lot of things, the evident disappointment on seeing some other things (Newark and Harrison are not among the cleanest and best-looking places in the US), the inability to understand any English spoken by a non-Indian, the too-tired-to-care body language and the melancholy of homesickness hidden ineffectively under their beaming faces – everything indicated to a state of mind that I recognized very well. I had been through it two years ago.

So how was “America” different from my expectations? I had written about some of it back then, but one does not realize everything in the first month. So here I’ll discuss a few more things that surprised me during these two years.

As soon as I came, I was surprised with the lack of people on the streets – especially in the residential areas. I wrote about that earlier. What I did not realize at the time is that New Jersey is the most densely populated state in the United States, and New York City has the highest population. So if I felt these places wore a deserted look, then places like Ithaca, some places in upstate New York en route Niagara and almost everything we saw between Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon felt like out of this planet. In this country, you can drive miles without ever coming across a pedestrian. Although I like crowds sometimes, this lack of people along large stretches of highways does create a very soothing view of the countryside which in India would have been dotted with slums, huts and roadside shops.

Americans produce an unbelievable amount of trash. Nobody ever recycles anything that can be thrown away. Whether they are plastic and glass jars, or fully useable furniture and appliances, everything gets thrown away. Tennis players don’t fetch balls that they hit outside the court. Golfers don’t look for balls that don’t land where they intended them to. People don’t climb the stairs if there’s an elevator. Some people have forgotten how to walk. The amount of damage they are doing to the environment is incalculable. But this will not be evident if you see the cities here. New York, one of the largest cities in the world, has an amazingly clear air. The sky is pristine blue and the visibility is about ten miles in clear weather (in Kolkata it is never more than two). Also, in spite of being one of the most light-polluted cities in the world, more stars are visible from New York than from Kolkata (a city that is mostly dark). While this difference probably has a complex explanation involving types of car engines and the quality of fuel used, one thing that is immediately evident is the presence of large parks inside the cities. When I say parks, I don’t mean dusty patches of ground with a swing and a slide, but several hundred acres of wooded area with lakes and wildlife. Once you enter Central Park in New York, only the distant skyline serves as a reminder that you are still in Manhattan. When the people of Kolkata protest against the court’s protection of the Maidan, they fail to realize that they are trying to destroy the city’s only chance of survival. Company Garden in Allahabad is almost exactly like an American park – large and wooded with small areas for gardens, monuments and playgrounds. I’m sure some other Indian cities have such parks too, but we need more of these in our country.

Another thing that I have come to realize about this country in these two years is the fact that the whole country is very much homogenized. You may go to Boston or to Las Vegas and the roads and buildings will look exactly the same despite the fact that the weather is very different in these two places. Having similar houses everywhere may look “neat” but it actually results in tremendous amounts of energy wastage for artificial heating and cooling. But then, energy is cheap here. Petrol is cheaper than water and Coke.

Americans are a strange people. Men have no problem showering naked together in a common bathroom at the gym, yet they will hesitate to sit next to strangers on a train. While a three-seater bench on a Kolkata local train always has four people on it, a three-seater on a New York train will usually have two. People will actually prefer standing to occupying that empty seat, and I have earned quite a few stares by squeezing into empty spots between strangers.

In fact, almost all the differences between the US and India can be traced back to a single factor, and that is population. I realized that soon after coming here, and I will say the same thing now after analyzing this country for two years. What are India’s problems? Pollution? Dirt? Corruption? Rudeness? Dishonesty? Indiscipline? Poverty? Illiteracy? Everything would have gone away (or at least reduced to the level of the US) automatically if the population were to reduce to 10% of the current value. It is not feasible to smile at strangers and say “Hi, how are you doing?” when you meet five hundred of them between your home and the bus stop. It is not rudeness, it is just common sense.

I did not tell these things to the new students. I will let them figure out these things by themselves. I am happy to see that many people of my generation seem to be able to look beyond the outward glitter and see this country for what it is – both good and bad. Many of these people are planning to return to India and make a difference there – something that people who came a few decades earlier did not do. But all that comes later. For the first few months, it is a time for unfeigned wonder: the wonder of seeing skyscrapers, visiting world famous places, looking at things that one has only read about. That does not mean the seeing stops after the first few months, but the enjoyment of seeing things for the first time gradually fades away.

I enjoyed it immensely. Now it is their turn. I will, in the meantime, watch their reactions and relive my memories.

Inception - The Review

[Before you start reading, please be aware that this post discusses a few plot elements from the recent movie “Inception” and the book “Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows” although I don’t think I have given away any major spoilers from either the movie or the book. Also, I think if you are interested in Harry Potter and haven’t read Deathly Hallows by now, probably you deserve spoilers being thrust into your face anyway!]

Mundungus Fletcher had an idea. It was a brilliant escape plan to take Harry away from the Dursleys. Only, it wasn’t he who generated the idea. It was Severus Snape who had gone into his subconscious mind and planted the seed of that idea. When Harry saw Snape doing it, he wasn’t seeing it in the real world of course; he had dived into Snape’s mind and he was looking at the projection of Snape and the projection of Mundungus talking among themselves. And as you know, Harry Potter exists just in the mind of author J. K. Rowling and her millions of fans, and we have no way of knowing whether Christopher Nolan is one of them. So when Nolan had this idea of inception, it was probably triggered by this projection of Mundungus in the mind of Snape’s projection in the mind of Harry who was in turn just a projection in Rowling’s mind – a Rowling who wasn’t real but just a projection of Nolan’s own subconscious.

Confused yet? Welcome to the world of Inception.

Christoper Nolan’s latest movie explores the world of dreams and the subconscious mind, and questions reality in a way that probably only “The Matrix” did in recent times. It is built on the premise that several people can share a dream and interact in the dreamer’s subconscious. There can also be a dream within a dream, a concept that we computer programmers call “recursion.” And just as in computer programming, if the exit condition is not specified properly, one runs into all kinds of problems.

The movie plays with its timeline in a very interesting way – without giving away any key plot points, let me say that when we dream for a few seconds, the incidents that occur in the dream span a much larger time. This “expansion of time” has been cleverly used throughout the movie which is as full of action and special effects as all action movies these days seem to be.

That’s about all I am going to say regarding this movie. Too much discussion is likely to harm your viewing experience. Leonardo DiCaprio is good as usual, as is the rest of the cast. Nothing new needs to be said about Nolan’s direction after “The Dark Knight” and Hans Zimmer’s music is lovely as usual. There is only one thing more that I want to say about this movie.

That is about the concept. The idea.

The protagonist in the movie says, “What's the most resilient parasite? An Idea. A single idea from the human mind can build cities. An idea can transform the world and rewrite all the rules. Which is why I have to steal it.” While nobody is accusing Christopher Nolan of stealing someone’s idea, the concept is not entirely original either. In stories all over the world, people interacting through dreams with other people both living and dead is a well-known plot device. As far as questioning reality and bending the rules of physics is concerned, The Matrix got there first, and the science of The Matrix (only the first one) was much more believable. Not that The Matrix was original either – we Indians have always known that the world is just Maya, but that is not relevant to this discussion here. What is relevant is the fact that the comparisons with The Matrix are inevitable for Inception, and according to me, Inception loses on that front.

And that is why, my final verdict is that while Inception is a very well-made movie, it left me a little disappointed. I don’t know whether the trailers were too explicit, or I had set my expectations a bit too high reading the “OMG Inception is the best movie made in like, ever!” Facebook status updates from some of my friends. But when I saw The Matrix, I felt it was full of surprises. Inception, on the other hand, felt predictable to the very end – not in the details of course, but in the overall plot. To be fair, I saw The Matrix when I was a lot younger, I had not seen trailers, and Facebook did not exist back then (I know I sound like somebody’s grandfather saying that line).

Inception is definitely an excellent movie. A “must-watch,” to use the oft-used phrase. But a life-changing experience as some people around me seem to claim? No way! Four stars out of five if you ask me. The Matrix would probably get five. Not Inception.

But then, it was The Matrix that planted the seed of the idea in our minds. Inception pays the price of coming second, and it does a very good job of being the second.

Tolerance

The other day someone asked me how I am surviving the summer without an air-conditioner in my attic room. The question may come as a surprise to people who don't know that New York City touched forty degrees Celsius last week. For me, however, the surprise was of a different kind. The very idea that I would be unable to survive without an air-conditioner in forty degree heat was laughable. After all, I have grown up in Allahabad where forty-five was the norm during summer and I had to bicycle back from school when candles turned liquid within minutes in the sun. Also, much of the day was spent without power supply and hence the absence of even a fan was a mere inconvenience that we learned to live with. And while explaining all this to my questioner, I thought about all the different ways in which growing up in India has hardened me against difficult situations. Some of the day-to-day situations that are very commonplace for me are extremely disturbing for my American companions, and this forms the basis for this post.

The first incident that comes to mind involves a mosquito. I was sitting at the subway station near my home one day while immersed in an interesting book. Suddenly, I heard something like “Ewwwww!!!” in a feminine voice from my left side and looked up. There was a teenage girl sitting next to me, and she was pointing at my knee with an expression of extreme horror and disgust on her face. Sitting close to people, pointing at them and saying “Ew” are all extremely rare in this country and so I decided to follow her finger and look at my knee. There, on my trouser-covered joint, sat a particularly large and juicy striped mosquito, which on brief inspection didn’t seem much different from the ones back home. Therefore I decided against treating it any different from the ones back home: I swatted it with my palm, dusted the carcass away and got back to my book. But as long as I sat there, I was keenly aware of a pair of eyes that pierced me with a gaze that was a mix of awe and disgust. After all, how could a common man kill such a big mosquito with his bare hands?

The second incident that I can remember didn’t strictly happen to me. It happened to my Turkish roommate. Someone at school explained to him that houses built prior to 1930 have lead pipes and people living there were in risk of lead poisoning. My roommate said our house was built in 1928, and so it must be having lead pipes. The other person apologized for scaring him, but my roommate just laughed in his face and said “I’m coming from Turkey; I don’t care about that stuff.”

I remember feeling really amused when I saw weather.com’s air quality alert for the first time. They advised people to stay indoors because the concentration of ozone near the ground was likely to be high during the day. I had to look up ozone in Wikipedia to find out what happens in ozone poisoning and what causes the ozone level to increase, and came to the conclusion that back home in India every day must have been a high-ozone day but nobody knew about it.

Be it something related to food or drink, or the weather, or phone, electricity or train services – whenever something falls out of the ordinary, the American way of living is thrown into disarray. People lose their way while driving as soon as the GPS gets confused. Take away cell phones and even basic tasks seem impossible. And the less one says about the Internet, the better. I have seen people sitting with the setting sun on their face, and breaking their heads over Google Maps trying to ascertain which direction they are facing. I, on the other hand, try to keep my dependence on machines to a minimum (a battle that I seem to be gradually losing) just because I want to make things easier for me when I go back to India.

Coming back to hilarious situations, the most memorable one occurred during one of the classes that I was teaching. I normally write a problem on the board at the beginning of the class. That day while writing on the board I was aware of a growing murmur in the class behind my back. I turned to find the students talking among themselves excitedly. “What’s the matter?” I snapped. “The place is crawling with bugs,” came the reply. Now I noticed there were winged termite-like insects all over the floor of the lab. Back home these insects come out during the rains and are considered quite harmless. So I asked the nearest student, with genuine impassivity, “So what’s the matter? Are they biting you?” He stared at me with a look of incredulity and replied in a hurt voice, “I do not want to sit in a classroom full of bugs even if they don’t bite me.” I realized my mistake and quickly moved to an adjoining room. Our tolerance of such extraordinary situations as normal can be very unnerving to Americans. Like the time when someone threw a dead kitten in our garbage bin, greatly upsetting my landlord. I remained calm and mildly amused throughout the whole incident, but that’s another story.

Of course, I maybe better adapted to commuting on an overcrowded train, but that does not mean I am always the one with the higher tolerance for something bad. I realized this when I was going to Ithaca a few days after arriving in the USA. As I bought the bus ticket, the gentleman at the counter gave me a badly torn $20 bill. “Can you change this please?” I asked. He gave me a surprised look and asked what was wrong with it. I showed him the tear which ran halfway down the bill. He replied “So?” and dismissed me with a wave of his hand. I later came to know that we Indians may have a better tolerance to heat or mosquitoes, but when it comes to torn currency notes, almost anything can be used in this country.

The Wrong Heaven

Came across this short story by Rabindranath Tagore while browsing through his works online, and couldn't resist the temptation to translate it. Is it just me, or do the people of heaven really look vaguely familiar?

The Wrong Heaven

~Rabindranath Tagore

-1-

The man was simply jobless.

He had no work, only a multitude of hobbies.

He used to pour earth into small wooden squares and then arranged small shells on it. From afar they looked like untidy paintings, with flocks of birds or uneven fields with cattle grazing; or undulating mountains with a stream flowing down, or perhaps a small walking-trail.

His family never ceased nagging him. Sometimes he vowed to let go of this madness, but the madness never let go of him.

-2-

There are some students who shirk studies all year round, but pass the exams by fluke. A similar predicament befell this man.

His life was spent in useless work, but after death he came to know that he had been granted entry in heaven.

But a man’s fate doesn’t leave him even when he is going to heaven. The messengers mixed up their records and put him in the hardworking people’s heaven.

In this heaven they have everything, only no leisure.

Here the men constantly say, “We don’t have time to breathe.” The women say, “Must go now, we have a lot of work pending.” Everyone says, “Time is expensive.” No one says, “Time is priceless.” Everyone grumbles, “Can’t work so hard” and they feel very happy saying it. The complaint “This hard work is killing us” is music to their ears.

Our poor man does not find a place here, he does not fit in. If he walks absent-mindedly on the road, he gets in the way of busy people. Wherever he spreads out his sheet to rest, he finds it is agricultural land and crops have been sown there. Constantly, he has to get up, he has to move away.

-3-

A very busy girl comes to fetch water from the heavenly water-source everyday.

She walks on the road like quick-rhythm music played on the sitar.

She has hurriedly tied up her loose hair into an untidy bun. Still, a few naughty locks are peeking down over her forehead to see her black eyes.

Our heavenly jobless man was standing at the side of the road, motionless like a tree by the restless spring.

The girl felt pity for this man, just as a princess feels pity seeing a beggar from her window.

“Don’t you have any work on your hands?”

The man sighed and said, “I don’t have the time to do work.”

The girl did not understand anything at all. “Do you want to take some work from my hands?” she asked.

The man said, “I am standing here just to take some work from your hands.”

“What work can I give you?”

“It would be nice if you could give me one of the pots of water that you carry at your waist.”

“What will you do with a pot? Fill water?”

“No, I will paint on its surface.”

The girl replied heatedly, “I don’t have time for this. I’ll go now.”

But how can a busy person be a match for an idle person? Everyday they met at the spring, and each day he said the same thing, “Give me a pot from your waist. I will paint on it.”

Finally she relented. She gave him a pot.

Around that pot the jobless man started painting multi-coloured loops, multi-lined patterns.

When he was done, the girl picked up the pot, turned it around and looked at it from all sides. She arched her eyebrows and asked, “What does this mean?”

The idle man said, “This has no meaning.”

The girl went home with her pot.

She secretly observed it in different lights, from different angles. At night, she left her bed to light a lamp and sit silently to look at that picture. In all her life, this was the first time she had seen something that had no meaning.

When she came to the spring the next day, the busy rhythm of her feet had a slight disturbance. It seemed as if while walking, her feet were absent mindedly thinking about – about something that had no meaning.

The man was again standing by the side of the road.

The girl said, “What do you want?”

He said, “I want more work from your hands.”

“What work can I give you?”

“If you agree, I will weave a ribbon for your hair from colourful threads.”

“What good will it do?”

“Nothing.”

Many different coloured ribbons were made, of many different designs. Now the girl spent a lot of time braiding her hair in front of a mirror. Her work remained unfinished, hours passed by.

-4-

Soon, the work in the hardworking people’s heaven started filling up with large gaps. Those gaps were filled up with songs and sobs.

The heavenly elders became worried. They called a meeting. They said, “This is the first time such a thing has happened in the history of heaven.”

The messenger came and confessed his mistake. “I delivered the wrong man to the wrong heaven,” he said.

The wrong man was summoned to the meeting. One look at his colourful turban and flashy belt was enough to convince everybody that it was indeed a big mistake.

The chairman said, “You will have to go back to earth.”

He tied his bag of paints and brushes to his belt and breathed a sigh of relief. “All right, I’m leaving then.”

The girl came and said, “I’ll go with him too.”

The elderly chairman became absent-minded. For the first time in his life he had seen something that had no meaning.

(Translation by Sugata Banerji.)

Whale of a Time

From a very young age, I have always been interested in whales. It could be because of the numerous animal picture books in our house or because of an audio cassette of the humpback whales’ famous songs that my father sometimes played, I always wanted to see these magnificent creatures. So it was inevitable that when I decided to visit some friends in Boston for a week, the activity that I was looking forward to most eagerly was not visiting MIT or Harvard but going on a whale-watching cruise.

Our catamaran started from Long Wharf in Boston on a fine Monday morning at ten. I was on the topmost deck as the boat gathered speed and moved out into open sea. The wind was more forceful than I had ever faced in my life, and although the weather was uncomfortably hot when we started, soon everyone was shivering and putting on jackets.

The beginning was very exciting. The deep blue water, the Boston skyline, the planes landing at the Logan International Airport and the windmills and lighthouses nearby provided ample material to keep the photographers busy. I walked around from bow to stern taking photos and watching people and photographing small islands as we passed by them.

Then we left all that behind, and it got boring. There was nothing to see, and nothing to hear except the wind. The wind and the engine collaborated to make any attempt to converse with fellow-passengers futile.

This being my first sea voyage (if a three-hour trip can be called that), I was probably a bit more enthusiastic than the majority of the crowd, who had by now either settled down in the comfort of the air-conditioned cabin or were sitting down on the floor of the deck to escape the howling wind. I was, of course, considering myself a mix of Captain Ahab, Captain Nemo, Christopher Columbus and Jack from the Titanic movie and stood at my post at the very nose of the vessel. Except for a brief moment when I had ducked down under the parapet and put on my jacket, I refused to look away from the horizon. I wanted to be the first person to spot the whales.

About one and a half hour after we had started, the public address systems on the vessel crackled to life. Nobody could hear anything, of course, unless they ducked down under the wind, but the whole crowd flocked out on the decks sensing something interesting was about to happen. I crouched down momentarily and realized they were talking about the whales in general, and I chose to scan the horizon deaf, rather than listen to whale experts blind.

“Whale there!” shouted the gentleman next to me suddenly. He was pointing towards a vessel similar to ours in the distance. “I just saw a spout on the left side of that boat,” he said. The boat in question was very far away, and I pointed my telephoto lens towards it. Sure enough, soon there was a fountain of water next to the boat, followed by an unmistakable black tail being thrust skywards. It was gone before I had time to focus (see photo). It was incredibly far – it was a miracle that the man had seen it in the first place. Evidently, the crew had seen it too, for we headed in the direction of the sighting. And as we approached the place, we saw white spouts and black bodies of the humpbacks coming closer and closer until they were just next to our ship.

The engines were cut off and the wind stopped howling immediately. The whale expert’s voice was clear now, but I was not listening to her. There were three glistening backs in the water. They took turns releasing their breath in sprays, and then doing somersaults in the water, never exposing too much of their bodies until they came to the tail. Then they would thrust the tail heavenwards and clear of the water before diving down while the water where they just dove acquired a strange oily flat look. If imagining a creature as big as a bus seems difficult, try imagining one that is as big as a bus and as graceful as a mermaid in water. All the cameras in the crowd went crazy. Then they surfaced on the other side of the boat and the whole crowd rushed from the starboard side to the port side, setting up a slight rocking movement in the process.

It was precisely at this moment when the first wave of nausea hit me.

In the excitement of the trip, I had forgotten all about my motion sickness problem and had failed to take any preventive medicines that I usually carry. Now as the boat bobbed on the waves and everyone struggled to maintain a foothold while holding cameras, I had a new worry – where to go if I wanted to throw up. Fortunately, I never needed to find out the answer.

The intense seasickness curbed my enjoyment to a great extent, but that does not mean I took my eyes – or my camera – off from the whales for one single moment. The three whales that were swimming around us included two females called Tornado and Nile (named after marks on their tails) and a third individual who was not recognized.

After spending some time with the whales, the catamaran started its engines and moved away looking for more pods. As we accelerated, I noted with relief that my seasickness was limited to the times when we were free-floating near the whales and subsided when the boat was moving and hence more stable. We soon found another pair of whales where we repeated the same maneuver as before. Then we saw another three, and finally another two some distance away, bringing the total count up to ten before turning back towards Boston. Everywhere, we saw flippers, tails, backs and spouts, and once even got a clear shot of the blow-holes, but we were never lucky enough to see a whale breaching. Breaching is the process by which a whale clears the surface of the water and throws its body partly or fully out into the air before landing back with a tremendous splash. We did not see it. And frankly, after the four stops that caused four separate bouts of seasickness, I wasn’t too sad about heading back.

I spent the return journey in the cabin – dozing half the time and talking to my parents the other half. Even when apparently in open sea, cell phone signals never deserted us. When I felt firm ground after my feet again about three-and-a-half hours after we had started, I wondered how people spend months on board ships at once. That little time was too much for me to endure.

That does not mean I am not going back, of course. After looking at those gigantic creatures so close, I consider my life incomplete unless I see and photograph a breaching whale. Until then, I’ll have to live with the memories of those white fountains and shiny black-and-white tails.

New-grandpa

"I bet you are not as strong as I am!" said the old man.

"Oh really? Dare to test that?" said the child beside him.

"Sure. I am balling my hand in a fist, let's see if you can open it."

And so it started, the child's struggle to open the fist. It seemed completely impenetrable at first, and the man kept casting doubts over the diet the child was growing up on if he was so weak. But after some time, the fist seemed to loosen up a little, and then suddenly, a little too suddenly perhaps, the child won. "Well, I am growing old," the man said, "and you are growing up. Can't win all the time!" The child was too happy to realize that even if he was growing up, he was not really strong enough to have opened that fist by himself if the old man had not faked his defeat.

The child grew up into a man and the old man grew older. Now nobody could have cast a doubt as to who was the stronger of the two. And yet, whenever they met, this tradition of opening the fist continued.

"You seem to have grown big. Are you strong enough?"

"Yeah. Want to test it?"

"Yes, let's see if you can open my fist."

Now the pretension was on the other side, but the outcome was the same. The young man seemed to struggle with the hand initially, and then opened it flat with ease. And then both of them laughed out loud at this silly game.

I don't know when this game started as I was too young at that time, but I know it ended yesterday when the old man passed away. I know I will not be opening his tight fist again and rejoicing over my victory.

He was my father's uncle - my grandmother's sister's husband, if that makes it clearer. My American friends will be surprised that such a relation even exists. It is pointless trying to explain what such a relationship could mean. There is no use trying to explain that you can really have more than one grandfather. No wonder we Indians are considered weird - we keep track of such people and consider them relatives. And yet, weird as it may sound, I called him "natun-dadu" which means "new-grandpa."

He was always an equal-aged playmate for me and my cousin, and with him, we knew we could get away with jokes and pranks that our "own" grandpas were too serious for. For instance, once when he was sitting at our house during a puja, I and my cousin competed with each other trying to see who could take out the most things by picking his pocket. We put them all back, of course - we did not have any use for his house keys, his pouch of tobacco and his strips of cigarette paper.

We, the children (I still prefer to put myself in that group), always thought natun-dadu was one of "us" but the truth is, he was equally mischievous with the adults - with my grandparents and my parents. He was notorious for his April fool pranks on unsuspecting relatives every year, and sometimes friends and even mere acquaintances became the victims. Like the time when he sent my grandma and the whole crowd of regular morning-walking ladies of Hooghly to a particular ghat on the Ganga to see the yachts with colourful sails that had assembled there. Who remembers the date when they go on a morning walk?

All that is past now. We don't have to stay alert on April 1 from now on, because most grown-ups are usually too busy to indulge in silly stuff like pranks.

Only, it makes me feel insecure. In the last few months, two of the close relatives whom I met during my last visit to India passed away (the other being my grandma's brother's wife). It makes me realize that when I go home after finishing my Ph.D., home will be a very different place, and many of the people who made growing up such a joyful experience for me will not be there any more.

I may have grown strong enough to open an old man's fist, but I am still not strong enough to not miss him when he is gone.

Africa

Which is the language that the largest number of people sing their national anthem in?

Is it English? Is it Chinese (Mandarin)? It couldn't be English as only 940 million people in the world sing English anthems while 1.25 billion people sing the Chinese anthem. But Mandarin isn't the correct answer either. Bangla is the winner here with 1.3 billion people singing their national anthem in Bangla. This figure is the total population of India and Bangladesh combined. This seems more surprising because we are used to looking at Bangla as a regional language and never think that our national anthem is written in it. I won't be surprised if the rumours floating around the Internet saying UNESCO has selected Bangla as the sweetest language in the world turn out to be true.

Coming back to the national anthem thing, it is a mighty impressive achievement for a language that the largest number of people sing their national anthem in that language, but even that achievement pales in comparison when we realize that all those 1.3 billion people sing national anthems that were written by just one man.

Today is that man's 149th birth anniversary.

Here is my attempt at translating one of his better-known poems. Unlike my earlier translations, this poem does not have rhyming lines. That is because the original Bangla version is also non-rhyming. However, I have tried to maintain the relative lengths of the lines and preserve the alliterations wherever possible.

Africa

~Rabindranath Tagore

In that chaotic early age

When The Creator, dissatisfied with Himself

Was repeatedly destroying His new creation,

In those days of His impatient head-shaking

The angry ocean’s arms

From the eastern earth’s breast

Snatched you away, Africa,

Locked you up under the dense guard of trees

In the inner chambers of meager light.

There, in solitary leisure you collected

The mysteries of the impenetrable,

Learnt the complex language of earth and sky,

Nature’s unfathomable wonders

Were enchanting your superconscious mind.

You were mocking the terrible

Under the guise of dissatisfaction,

Attempting to defeat fear

By turning fierce in the aura of the terrifying

Dancing to the drumbeats of destruction.

.

Alas, Shaded Lady,

Under your black hood

Your human face lay unrecognized

To the clouded vision of neglect.

They came with iron handcuffs

With claws sharper than your wolves’,

They came, the human-catchers

With arrogance more blinding than your sunless forests.

The barbaric greed of the civilized

Bared its shameless inhumanity.

In your jungle paths steamy with wordless sobs

The dust turned to muck with your blood and tears;

Under the nail-studded boots of the plunderers

That horrifying mass of mud

Put an indelible mark on your insulted history.

.

At that very moment in their hometowns across the ocean

Worship-bells rang in temples

At daybreak and dusk, in the name of gracious God;

Children were playing in their mother’s laps

Poets were singing to music

Their odes to beauty.

.

Today, when on the western horizon

Evening holds its breath before a storm,

When the animals have come out of their concealed caves,

And announced the end of the day in their ominous voice,

Come, O new-age poet,

In the last rays before the impending night

Stand at that disgraced damsel’s door,

Say “Forgive us” –

Amidst the violent delirium

Let these be the last sacred words of your civilization.

.

(Translated by Sugata Banerji)

Justice

The day ended with a happy note for me today as a bit of good news found its way onto my Facebook homepage this evening. It was the news that Ajmal Kasab, the lone terrorist captured alive in the 26/11 Mumbai attack, had been sentenced to death. It was a much awaited decision, and one that I expected to be widely welcomed despite being too little and too late. A little later, I was proved wrong by two friends (and several unknown people on Facebook) who protested vehemently against the decision. So this post is to clarify my stand on this issue.

If, as a reader, you are disgusted at the tone of glee I express at someone’s death sentence, please read on. This post is particularly for you.

I am usually bad at remembering names, but one name got indelibly etched in my memory the day I heard it almost eleven years ago. The name is Ripen Katyal. It belonged to a 25 year old man who was returning from his honeymoon trip to Nepal on Indian Airlines flight IC-814. His crime was the same as mine – being a citizen of India. The plane was hijacked and taken to Kandahar via Lahore. Ripen’s throat was slashed for not following the hijackers’ instructions while a government that prided itself on testing a nuclear bomb in a desert tried to think of a plan. After several days, three of the most dangerous terrorists ever caught in India had to be returned to Pakistan in exchange for the planeful of people. Only Ripen Katyal didn’t return.

I asked a lot of questions then which remained mostly unanswered. One of them was, why couldn’t they have put a slow acting poison in the three released terrorists’ last meal with the Indian authorities? I was told that wasn’t playing fair – as if hijacking a plane was playing fair. But the question that most Indians asked was, why hadn’t these terrorist masterminds been killed already? Although the answer provided by the government was vague and unconvincing, today’s incident proved that Indians seem to have learnt a lesson since then as the judge handling Kasab's case said today.

Describing the 22-year-old Lashkar-trained terrorist as "a menace to society", Tahaliyani specifically alluded to the 1999 Kandahar case in 1999, when an Indian plane was hijacked to free dangerous terrorists who were imprisoned at the time. "Keeping him alive would be a constant danger to government and the state," he said.

Now a number of people, some of them my friends, are arguing about the relevance of capital punishment in civilized society. They say the state should be compassionate. The state does not have the right to kill anyone just because it does not believe in their ideology. Only people like Kasab have the right to kill. Well, ok, my friend didn’t really say that last one, but you get the gist of what he meant.

The funny thing is, I would have loved to agree with them. I would love that because then that would have meant we live in an ideal society where every criminal commits a crime for his “ideology” and reforms himself when given a chance. However, we do not live in such a world, and so, punishment for crime becomes necessary. But is any crime bad enough to award the death penalty? Let’s see what the condemned man did: he is charged with the murder of 166 men, women and children. Of course, some friends had told me after 26/11 that “a few hundred civilian casualties per year is a small price that we are willing to pay in exchange for not having a full-blown war,” but the judge seemed to disagree with that point of view. When the security cameras recorded Kasab shooting indiscriminately into the crowd at the Mumbai CST station, he seemed to enjoy it. Can such a man be trusted to repent what he did and reform himself? And even if he does, what will we achieve? After spending a few crores of the taxpayers’ money on his trial, security and jail facilities, we will have a good citizen. We have about a billion of them already, and we don’t want another one. However, execute him with enough media focus and you have created an example. Like USA did with Saddam Hussain. Personally I would enjoy seeing a YouTube video of Kasab’s hanging, though unfortunately it may be some time before we can see that.

So far I have discussed two arguments in favour of the hanging. Firstly, Ajmal Kasab is like radioactive waste in human form – the sooner we dispose of him, the better. Secondly, his crimes are too grave and chance of repentance too small to make mercy worthwhile. I will end with the biggest reason why he should be hanged: justice.

Kasab came from Pakistan and attacked India, killing innocent civilians without remorse. We cannot really do anything to do justice here – nothing we do will bring back those 166 people. But the families of those people will live a little happier knowing that the person who killed their loved ones isn’t roaming free himself, enjoying life. That, according to me, is the single most important reason why Kasab needs to be killed. Of course, people are arguing that he should be treated with compassion, which we are doing. Ideally, he should have been shot 166 times in non-lethal places in his body and left to die from gangrene. Publicly if possible. But we are a compassionate society – we do not employ such brutal means of punishment which people from Kasab’s own faith prefer in the Arab countries. We are also a spineless society – we do not have the guts to go and do to Pakistan what US did to Japan after Pearl Harbour or to Afghanistan after 9/11. So the only way we can serve justice is by killing this man. We will (hopefully) hang him away from the public eye, in a dignified manner. It is almost like giving the guy an easy way out, but that’s the most we can do. Let’s not hesitate in this little punishment. Some people may point out that he is just a scapegoat, but then, the meat of a scapegoat is just as tasty. I’m sure most people of our country would love to see Kasab hanged.

So friends, I am not convinced by your arguments that Ajmal Kasab doesn’t deserve the death penalty. One killing does not justify another, you say? We can have a nice little argument about that, but after Kasab is hanged. I have to travel on a lot of Indian flights, and I’m sorry if I sound selfish here, but I value my life more than his. I don't want to end up like Ripen Katyal. There is only one way by which you can make me see your point of view, and it is like this: come to me and repeat these same ideas about compassion and the government’s right to kill after one of your parents or siblings or children or a life partner has been killed in a terrorist attack. Nothing personal, of course! I would express my gravest condolences, and wholeheartedly agree with you that although your beloved had to be carried away in four different pieces, killing the captured terrorist wouldn’t serve any purpose.

Oh, and in case you are outraged at my suggestion that such a thing might happen, I think I have made my point.

Update: Check out this video in case you aren't convinced. Beware, it is not for the weak of heart.