China will up its aid to Nepal by 50 per cent. That is whopping and snooty considering Nepal was once under India’s sphere of influence.
I say ‘once’ because I do not know if Indians call the shots anymore now that the red brigade has taken over in Nepal.
India found itself in a fix when Maoists won a majority in Nepal. Common sense read foreign policy concerns, dictate that dear Surd and Aunty Sonia should have extended the olive branch at once. Not that there was a dearth of people to send feelers. If the royals could have acted as state messengers in the past, Congress party’s biggest asset was the CPI (M).
Though Yechury was quite active as a member of the coalition government on bridging the gap with Nepal Maoists, I do not recall much on the Indian government being able to adopt a clear and concrete stand on Nepal and Maoists.
My point is, if the Congress had no qualms to accept the commies’ support to form a government what was the hesitation to talk to Prachanda in Nepal.
Think about it.
If ideologies poses no bar in forging domestic alliances why do they create a barrier on the international front.
India supported the status quo in Nepal and was against royals being plucked out of the Nepalese social fabric. But the truth is they were and it was time to do business with Maoists. Is it not dealing with the Myanmar Junta despite its paeans on democracy?
When it comes to India vs. China, it is more about who paws the maximum space in least time. Chinese wooed Burma while Indians struggled to strike an optimal stand on the Junta government.
Africa fell head over heels for China’s overtures, India watched from the fringes. India turned West but Iran was tough to tackle. Chinese had already made inroads in Central Asia.
Coming back to the issue, why has the presence of the Left in the Centre not been used to woo the Maoists in Nepal or to resolve the domestic Naxalite problem for that matter?
(Ok, Naxalites are CPI (ML) but there are there no umbilical connections despite ideological dissimilarities)
Why has the Left in India not been proactive to counter the Chinese carrots to Nepal?
Without getting into the rut of Indian communist allegiance to China, why have the brilliant comrades not been vocal on anything except the nuclear issue?
Indian politics has seen some of the weirdest strategic combinations. However the shrewdness is lacking when it comes to foreign policy and critical domestic issues.
Nepal is too close a punch. Wake up!
Monday, April 20, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Politics of assitance
Two pieces of news that caught my attention:
First, Friends of Pakistan have pledged (Japan and the US have promised US$ one billion each, Saudi Arabia-US$700 million, the EU -$640 million) financial assistance to Pakistan to help it deal with its financial crisis and tackle the worsening Islamic militancy problem.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993772553428271.html
Mr Zardari recently agreed to let the SWAT valley confirm to Taliban diktats in a bid to ensure peace on Pakistan’s western front. Does Mrs Benazir Bhutto ever think if Talibans had decided to mete special treatment to Pakistan 20 years earlier, he and his wife may never have been at the helm of PPP politics?
I understand that an economically failed Pakistan is more lethal but Mr Obama what is the wisdom here? Seems we may have to wait for Hillary Clinton to pen down her memoirs for an insight into the faustian deals stuck under the table.
Second, Chinese delegates have blocked an Asian Development Bank proposal to lend US$ 60 million to India for development in Arunachal Pradesh.
http://www.visitchn.com/2009/04/china-blocks-adb-india-loan-plan.html
Ye intehaan ki ghadi hai, ek taraf desh prem doosri taraf namak ka karz. Mai chup rahungi!
PS: The financial crisis has given a golden opportunity to China to legitimise its stake to super power status (I am unsure if militarily China is a superpower)
It has also added to the hurdles, India will have to overcome before it can claim a similar clout on the world stage.
First, Friends of Pakistan have pledged (Japan and the US have promised US$ one billion each, Saudi Arabia-US$700 million, the EU -$640 million) financial assistance to Pakistan to help it deal with its financial crisis and tackle the worsening Islamic militancy problem.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993772553428271.html
Mr Zardari recently agreed to let the SWAT valley confirm to Taliban diktats in a bid to ensure peace on Pakistan’s western front. Does Mrs Benazir Bhutto ever think if Talibans had decided to mete special treatment to Pakistan 20 years earlier, he and his wife may never have been at the helm of PPP politics?
I understand that an economically failed Pakistan is more lethal but Mr Obama what is the wisdom here? Seems we may have to wait for Hillary Clinton to pen down her memoirs for an insight into the faustian deals stuck under the table.
Second, Chinese delegates have blocked an Asian Development Bank proposal to lend US$ 60 million to India for development in Arunachal Pradesh.
http://www.visitchn.com/2009/04/china-blocks-adb-india-loan-plan.html
Ye intehaan ki ghadi hai, ek taraf desh prem doosri taraf namak ka karz. Mai chup rahungi!
PS: The financial crisis has given a golden opportunity to China to legitimise its stake to super power status (I am unsure if militarily China is a superpower)
It has also added to the hurdles, India will have to overcome before it can claim a similar clout on the world stage.
Friday, April 3, 2009
An account of an alleged female suicide bomber
I have a good or bad habit of googling names of people I knew. Reading the NewYorker, I came across a name, Bashrat Peer whom I remember vaguely from the university days. I never knew him as a friend but knew that he was a Kashmiri and a journalist. The article mentioned, he has written a book on Kashmir. I googled his name and came across a story he had written about an alleged female suicide bomber who died when bombs strapped to her body got triggered off accidentally-
The bride with a bomb
Yasmeena Akhter is claimed by Kashmir militants as a suicide bomber and a martyr. But was she? Basharat Peer pieces together the story of a young militant and her dangerous love affair
Basharat Peer
The Guardian, Saturday 5 August 2006
Five days after the earthquake struck Kashmir in October last year, Ghulam Nabi sat in his shop in the south Kashmir town of Avantipura looking out at the highway that connects the Kashmir Valley to the Indian plains. Today, as every day, he saw hundreds of Indian military vehicles drive past. A hundred metres or so from his shop stands the local headquarters of the anti-insurgency wing of the Kashmir Police, and beyond that an Indian army camp.
Some of the most lethal attacks on Indian troops in the past few years have happened on this highway. It is an area dense with military and militants. That morning Nabi noticed even more soldiers and armed policemen on patrol than usual. An inspector general was visiting the police HQ and he wondered if a militant attack was expected. But, mostly, Nabi's thoughts were with the earthquake victims on both sides of the Line of Control, the temporary border dividing Kashmir into parts controlled by India and Pakistan.
Political discontent has simmered in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir since partition in 1947 - the more so in latter years as Kashmiri rights and autonomy were eroded. Wars, several insurgencies, and countless political manoeuvres have failed to settle the issue of the "ownership" of Kashmir, and since the mid-1990s the rebellion has taken on a more jihadi, pro-Pakistan aspect; secular Kashmiri separatist groups that have laid down their arms have been overshadowed. Peace talks between India and Pakistan have made little progress and death remains a constant visitor.
At about 10.30am, Nabi heard a deafening explosion and saw a dark cloud of smoke rising. He pulled down the shop's iron shutters and lay on the floor. He expected gunfire - instead he heard a crowd outside. Scores of policemen, soldiers and civilians were rushing towards the house behind his shop. The explosion had shattered the windows of the house and a boundary wall. The vegetable garden in front of the house was covered with shards of glass and blood.
The crowd talked about a fidayeen, or suicide bomber, who had accidentally triggered off the explosives before the attack. "I saw parts of legs torn from the knees, shredded intestines and then I saw a part of the skull and a long braid of black hair. It was hard to believe. But it was a girl." Nabi's face contorted in horror as we talked in his shop eight months later.
After the blast, a spokesperson of the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed - which is believed to have carried out the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 - phoned the BBC's office in Srinagar and claimed responsibility. The caller told the BBC that the dead woman was Yasmeena Akhter, a member of Jaish's Banaat-e-Ayesha (Daughters of Ayesha, the wife of Prophet Mohammed) regiment. He claimed that she was their first female suicide bomber, that she had attacked an Indian army convoy and had killed six soldiers.
Militant groups routinely claim responsibility for attacks on Indian troops in Kashmir and give exaggerated accounts of casualties. In fact, Yasmeena was the only casualty of the explosion. By the mid-June afternoon when I met Nabi and other townspeople in Avantipura, the 22-year-old Yasmeena and her last moments had already become myth. Some said that she had been begging in the marketplace and planned to enter the police and paramilitary camp as a beggar woman. Others told me that she saw a group of soldiers frisking men and women on the highway, escaped into the lane, and a few seconds later the bomb exploded. It went off outside the house of Ghulam Mohammed, a retired government officer: he told me he'd been asleep at the time and thought the earthquake had struck again. His son pointed towards a poplar rising over the rebuilt boundary wall - it was still covered with a thick layer of soot.
I walked to the police and paramilitary HQ, ringed with razor wire and heavily guarded. Some officers believe their camp was Yasmeena's target and the explosives went off accidentally. At the blast site they had found three live hand grenades and pieces of a torn combat pouch - a belt with big pockets, that's tied around the chest. "A person wearing a body belt tends to itch and adjust it frequently," said Mumtaz Ahmad, a police superintendent, by way of explanation.
At the district court in Pulwama, 20 miles away, a clerk showed me the records of the investigation and pictures of the explosion. The file describes Yasmeena as a girl who "wore explosives on her body for the purpose of a terrorist suicide attack aimed at hurting the security forces and the police. She killed herself when the explosives went off accidentally near the Avantipura police headquarters." I looked at the pictures: a dust-covered shoe on a leg torn away at the thigh; lifeless eyes staring out of the partial remains of the face; remnants of her body placed in a white cotton shroud.
Women combatants are not part of Kashmiri tradition. Reporting on Kashmir, I have met several women who have suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Indian troops and police officers, as well as the Kashmiri and Pakistani militants fighting them. The latest of such brutalities came to public attention in May this year when it was revealed that scores of teenage girls and young women had been blackmailed into becoming "comfort women" for politicians, police and bureaucrats.
The girls had been lured by interviews for government jobs; they were raped after being given sedatives with tea and filmed. Following determined protests by Kashmiris, the Indian government ordered an investigation and many leading figures in the administration were arrested. But no female victim has chosen violent means to seek revenge; instead, they have tried, with resignation, to rebuild their lives.
I wondered what motivated Yasmeena. Was she really a suicide bomber? I drove to Samboora, her native village half an hour from Avantipura, to find her mother and the people who had known her when she was growing up. The village, a cluster of old mud brick dwellings and new baked brick and concrete houses, stretches between a plateau of saffron and paddy fields. Rows of women and men were planting paddy seedlings in the fields and singing traditional love songs. On the verandah of an austere brick house near the fields, a woman pruned vegetables in a wicker basket. This was Mughli, Yasmeena's mother. Yasmeena was the third of her four daughters. She and her husband Yusuf farmed and, after the agricultural season, Yusuf worked as a carpenter. When the armed rebellion against Indian rule began in 1990, their austere but contented lives began to change.
Separatist militants had a big presence in Samboora village - Yusuf became enamoured and joined them, Mughli told me. In 1993, he was arrested by Indian troops and taken away. Mughli supported her daughters, working as a daily-wage labourer in the village fields and spinning wool. Yasmeena was 10 and her sister, Roheena, 12. During the three years Yusuf was in prison, the Indian army began funding a group of counter-insurgent militants called Ikhwanis, who murdered anyone they suspected of being sympathetic to the separatist militants.
One of the most notorious, Papa Kishtwari, operated in the Samboora area. "He sent a letter to Yusuf ordering him to work in his house as a carpenter," Mughli recalled. Yusuf complied and in return Kishtwari escorted Yusuf to the local sufi shrine, the social centre of the village, where they would be sure to be seen together. Villagers and militants from the biggest Kashmiri group, Hizbul Mujahideen, began seeing Yusuf as a collaborator. Young men with guns began lurking near their house, and when Mughli saw them off with an axe, letters containing death threats followed. And so did raids by Indian troops and counter-insurgency police, who routinely pursue militants released from prison and keep the pressure on them to provide information about their militant associates.
The family lived an uneasy, anxiety-filled life. Yasmeena and Roheena dropped out of school in the late 1990s. In early 2002, Yusuf was abducted by unknown gunmen and found tortured and bleeding almost to death in the saffron fields near his village. Yasmeena and Mughli carried him to a Srinagar hospital and spent the next few months nursing him.
On his return from hospital, Yusuf looked to the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, for help. A commander of the group, Abu Hafiz, and his bodyguard, Adnan, offered Yusuf protection if he built an underground hideout in his house where they could live. Yusuf agreed to the barter, and the two moved in.
"Hafiz was against any romantic involvement with the women of the family sheltering them, but Adnan was attracted to Yasmeena," said a senior Kashmir police officer, who followed the family for years. Around a year later, Hafiz was killed in a gun battle with Indian troops. Adnan stayed on in the hideout. His romance with Yasmeena continued and they married in September 2004. "A secret marriage was performed without any social ceremony. Our informers saw Yasmeena and Adnan together at various places. She began helping him with transporting explosives and weapons," said the officer, whom Mughli had described as a "decent" man.
Still a target for the authorities, Yusuf left home and began living as a fugitive with Pakistani militants. "Mother and I would be scared but Yasmeena looked the soldiers and policemen in the eye and shouted that we did not know where Father was," said Roheena, now aged 24. In December 2004, a few months after Yasmeena and Adnan married, a joint team of the Indian army and a police special operations group raided her house. The underground hideout was discovered; explosives and ammunition recovered. "They broke the window panes, pulled apart the doors and dug up the house. They abused and beat us up and interrogated Yasmeena throughout the day. That evening she left home and never returned," said Roheena.
Roheena was suspicious and fearful of the repercussions of what she might say - the conflict has made Kashmir a paranoid valley - but she did add: "Yasmeena was afraid that the army and the police would come again. We realised that she had joined the militants."
"She just left and never came back," said Mughli, breaking down and crying inconsolably. There was no search, no contacting of relatives - they knew she must be with her husband Adnan.
Mughli and Roheena clammed up when I mentioned Yasmeena's marriage. Many villagers had mentioned the humiliation of the family after rumours and gossip about Yasmeena's affair with a militant. How could a girl marry a man who was bound to be killed or arrested sooner or later?
She was not the first. I thought of Asiya Andrabi, who had married a militant commander, now in prison. She founded and heads the puritanical Islamist women's group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Muslim Community), that supports the armed militancy and ran a failed campaign to make Kashmiri women wear veils in 1990. Andrabi resurfaced in the public sphere in the summer of 2004, when she and her activists harassed young couples catching a few moments of intimacy in the claustrophobic cabins of internet cafes or sharing lunch in dimly-lit restaurants.
In newspaper photographs, Andrabi looked like a female Zorro, a veiled woman raising fists covered in white gloves. She had become a born-again Muslim in 1986, a time when she'd been feeling depressed and thwarted because her family forbade her from pursuing postgraduate studies in biochemistry in the distant Indian city of Pune. I met her in her Srinagar house in mid-June; she was barely four and a half feet tall and covered in her signature veil from head to toe. Andrabi was not surprised by Yasmeena's decision to marry an Islamic militant from Pakistan, and considered it an honour for any Kashmiri woman to do so.
I was sceptical whether Yasmeena would have shared Andrabi's viewpoint. Yasmeena's mother Mughli and sister Roheena didn't wear a veil or seem to espouse Andrabi's zealous attitude towards Islam. When I first visited, the family invited me for tea inside their tiny kitchen-cum-living room. I was struck by a framed picture hanging above their television set. "It is the only picture of Yasmeena left with us," said Roheena. A girl with stern black eyes stared from the brightly tinted collage, a thick lock of hair falling on her right cheek, in the style of a Bollywood actress.
On my way back I met Inspector Manzoor Lone, the police officer heading the counter-insurgency operations around Yasmeena's village. He had just returned to his fortess-like office in Pampore town after a gun battle in which two militants were killed. On a chart pasted on a wall in his office, the names of the slain militants are crossed out in red ink. Lone had raided Yasmeena's house on various occasions. "I don't think she was an ideologically motivated militant. It was simply a love story," he said.
Even Asiya Andrabi opposed the involvement of women in militancy. She argued that Islam did not allow women to be combatants, especially suicide bombers. "It is against the dignity of a Muslim woman that the parts of her body be strewn in a public place. If a combatant or a suicide bomber is a woman, her dead body is bound to fall or be scattered in a place full of men," she told me. She supported suicide bombing by men; her objection to suicide attacks by women seemed to rest on the notion that a woman's modesty must be preserved even in death.
Andrabi was critical of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed for allowing Yasmeena to play an active role. "They use girls as couriers for explosives because girls can easily pass through check posts. I think Yasmeena was a courier and the explosives went off accidentally. Later, they glorified her death and claimed her as a suicide bomber. It was shocking for me," she said. Strangely, some senior officers in the counter-insurgency police agreed with her assessment. In another rare accord, both Jaish-e-Mohammed and police records in the district court described Yasmeena as a suicide bomber. Who was right? Was an explosion planned or was Yasmeena a courier so desperate to avoid detection that she had strapped the lethal cargo to her chest?
I went back to the police officers who had followed the tragic journey of her fa~mily.
Some months after the December 2004 raid on Yasmeena's house, her husband Adnan had been arrested by police in the Indian capital, New Delhi. "He was in Delhi to receive cash for his group from a contact. The contact had already been arrested by the Delhi police and had called Adnan at their behest. After Adnan was tortured, he provided us with information about his militant group.
With his help, we were able to arrest and kill a number of militants in southern Kashmir, where he used to operate," said a senior officer. How would a 21-year-old girl, who had married a militant, joined his organisation, and lived the life of a fugitive, react to her husband's arrest and the prospect of him spending an unknown number of years in some Indian prison, or a brief report describing his death under police fire while trying to "escape"?
In the overworked Psychiatric Diseases Hospital of Srinagar, I met Mushtaq Margoob, the foremost psychiatrist of Kashmir, who has spent the past 16 years - all the years of Kashmir's armed conflict - treating people with post-traumatic stress. In his research on post-conflict suicide, he found that the age group most inclined towards suicide was 20-25. "Leaving home and working as a militant, Yasmeena would have lived with the constant fear of a raid by troops.
She and her husband and others of the group would have constantly changed hideouts. It's bound to lead to severe adjustment problems," he said. Yasmeena's father had been in prison when she was an adolescent, and she had married a militant at 20. "A girl like Yasmeena, who lacked paternal love, would have had a strong emotional attachment to her husband. And if he was arrested and she continued to be a militant without any emotional support or security, she was bound to become suicidal," Margoob added.
Was being a suicide bomber or a courier of explosives (which also exposes one to the risk of certain death at the smallest mistake), the only way out for Yasmeena? Could she not have surrendered, spent some time in jail, and returned to lead a "normal" life in her village?
I recalled Firdausa, a girl from the south Kashmir town of Shopian, who loved and secretly married a Pakistani militant. They tried leaving for Pakistan after securing fake Indian passports, but were arrested by the police in January 2006 after the news of their marriage spread. Firdausa was released after a month and returned to live with her parents in Shopian town, around 50km south of Srinagar. Most people I met in Shopian advised me against meeting her. "Militants still visit her place and you never know when the army raids," said Rashid, an elderly teacher. He was uncomfortable with a Kashmiri girl marrying a Pakistani militant who might have chosen to call Kashmir his war but was not accepted as part of Kashmiri society.
The younger men I met were harsher. "If a Pakistani militant dies in a battle with Indian troops, we would give him a Muslim burial, but he is not one of us. Firdausa has come back to live with her parents, but our town sees her as a wayward woman, a prostitute. No man here will be ready to marry her," said Manzoor Ahmad, a young student. Firdausa's town, Shopian, and Yasmeena's village, Samboora, are an hour apart and alike in all respects. It seemed unlikely that Yasmeena would have been able to return to a normal life.
I revisited Yasmeena's family to inquire whether she had talked about being a militant. This time I met her mother Mughli and Yasmeena's eldest sister, who is married and lives in a distant village. "She never visited me at my in-laws' place as we live near an army camp," the sister said. I was struck when she told me her husband was a soldier in the Indian army, which is rare among Kashmiris. It seemed all the stranger considering two family members, father and daughter, were militants. "Her husband joined the army because that was the only job available, and we got them married because he is my brother's son," Mughli explained.
I asked her whether Yasmeena talked about martyrdom after the troops raided their house, when her father was in prison or when he was forced to work for counter-insurgents. "No! Never! She did the household chores and worked in the fields. She loved eating, attended all marriages we were invited to, and sang marriage songs. She never spoke about wanting to fight or being a martyr." Mughli held my arm and broke down. "I will tell you why she died like that," she said, pausing between sobs. "A martyr's death was the only honourable option for my daughter. Thousands came here to congratulate me on her martyrdom." Then she fell silent and sobbed.
I walked to the local graveyard on the main road, where around 20 people killed in the conflict were buried. The marble tombstones had names of the dead, dates of their deaths, and verses expressing longing for independence from India, calligraphed in different styles. In a corner I found Yasmeena's grave; someone had showered rose petals around it. I was struck by the verse on her tombstone:
This generous soil sheltered me
After the suspicions of a heartless world
The lament against the censure of a conservative rural society spoke of the despair of a young woman whose tragic family history and reckless heart had pushed her into dangerous militant terrain, and further. Standing beside her grave I watched a torrent of young girls rush out of the school adjacent to the graveyard and head home along the dusty road. Seven years back Yasmeena had been one of them. I hoped that none of them ever has a life like hers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/05/pakistan.weekend7
The bride with a bomb
Yasmeena Akhter is claimed by Kashmir militants as a suicide bomber and a martyr. But was she? Basharat Peer pieces together the story of a young militant and her dangerous love affair
Basharat Peer
The Guardian, Saturday 5 August 2006
Five days after the earthquake struck Kashmir in October last year, Ghulam Nabi sat in his shop in the south Kashmir town of Avantipura looking out at the highway that connects the Kashmir Valley to the Indian plains. Today, as every day, he saw hundreds of Indian military vehicles drive past. A hundred metres or so from his shop stands the local headquarters of the anti-insurgency wing of the Kashmir Police, and beyond that an Indian army camp.
Some of the most lethal attacks on Indian troops in the past few years have happened on this highway. It is an area dense with military and militants. That morning Nabi noticed even more soldiers and armed policemen on patrol than usual. An inspector general was visiting the police HQ and he wondered if a militant attack was expected. But, mostly, Nabi's thoughts were with the earthquake victims on both sides of the Line of Control, the temporary border dividing Kashmir into parts controlled by India and Pakistan.
Political discontent has simmered in the Indian-controlled sector of Kashmir since partition in 1947 - the more so in latter years as Kashmiri rights and autonomy were eroded. Wars, several insurgencies, and countless political manoeuvres have failed to settle the issue of the "ownership" of Kashmir, and since the mid-1990s the rebellion has taken on a more jihadi, pro-Pakistan aspect; secular Kashmiri separatist groups that have laid down their arms have been overshadowed. Peace talks between India and Pakistan have made little progress and death remains a constant visitor.
At about 10.30am, Nabi heard a deafening explosion and saw a dark cloud of smoke rising. He pulled down the shop's iron shutters and lay on the floor. He expected gunfire - instead he heard a crowd outside. Scores of policemen, soldiers and civilians were rushing towards the house behind his shop. The explosion had shattered the windows of the house and a boundary wall. The vegetable garden in front of the house was covered with shards of glass and blood.
The crowd talked about a fidayeen, or suicide bomber, who had accidentally triggered off the explosives before the attack. "I saw parts of legs torn from the knees, shredded intestines and then I saw a part of the skull and a long braid of black hair. It was hard to believe. But it was a girl." Nabi's face contorted in horror as we talked in his shop eight months later.
After the blast, a spokesperson of the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed - which is believed to have carried out the attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001 - phoned the BBC's office in Srinagar and claimed responsibility. The caller told the BBC that the dead woman was Yasmeena Akhter, a member of Jaish's Banaat-e-Ayesha (Daughters of Ayesha, the wife of Prophet Mohammed) regiment. He claimed that she was their first female suicide bomber, that she had attacked an Indian army convoy and had killed six soldiers.
Militant groups routinely claim responsibility for attacks on Indian troops in Kashmir and give exaggerated accounts of casualties. In fact, Yasmeena was the only casualty of the explosion. By the mid-June afternoon when I met Nabi and other townspeople in Avantipura, the 22-year-old Yasmeena and her last moments had already become myth. Some said that she had been begging in the marketplace and planned to enter the police and paramilitary camp as a beggar woman. Others told me that she saw a group of soldiers frisking men and women on the highway, escaped into the lane, and a few seconds later the bomb exploded. It went off outside the house of Ghulam Mohammed, a retired government officer: he told me he'd been asleep at the time and thought the earthquake had struck again. His son pointed towards a poplar rising over the rebuilt boundary wall - it was still covered with a thick layer of soot.
I walked to the police and paramilitary HQ, ringed with razor wire and heavily guarded. Some officers believe their camp was Yasmeena's target and the explosives went off accidentally. At the blast site they had found three live hand grenades and pieces of a torn combat pouch - a belt with big pockets, that's tied around the chest. "A person wearing a body belt tends to itch and adjust it frequently," said Mumtaz Ahmad, a police superintendent, by way of explanation.
At the district court in Pulwama, 20 miles away, a clerk showed me the records of the investigation and pictures of the explosion. The file describes Yasmeena as a girl who "wore explosives on her body for the purpose of a terrorist suicide attack aimed at hurting the security forces and the police. She killed herself when the explosives went off accidentally near the Avantipura police headquarters." I looked at the pictures: a dust-covered shoe on a leg torn away at the thigh; lifeless eyes staring out of the partial remains of the face; remnants of her body placed in a white cotton shroud.
Women combatants are not part of Kashmiri tradition. Reporting on Kashmir, I have met several women who have suffered physical and psychological abuse at the hands of Indian troops and police officers, as well as the Kashmiri and Pakistani militants fighting them. The latest of such brutalities came to public attention in May this year when it was revealed that scores of teenage girls and young women had been blackmailed into becoming "comfort women" for politicians, police and bureaucrats.
The girls had been lured by interviews for government jobs; they were raped after being given sedatives with tea and filmed. Following determined protests by Kashmiris, the Indian government ordered an investigation and many leading figures in the administration were arrested. But no female victim has chosen violent means to seek revenge; instead, they have tried, with resignation, to rebuild their lives.
I wondered what motivated Yasmeena. Was she really a suicide bomber? I drove to Samboora, her native village half an hour from Avantipura, to find her mother and the people who had known her when she was growing up. The village, a cluster of old mud brick dwellings and new baked brick and concrete houses, stretches between a plateau of saffron and paddy fields. Rows of women and men were planting paddy seedlings in the fields and singing traditional love songs. On the verandah of an austere brick house near the fields, a woman pruned vegetables in a wicker basket. This was Mughli, Yasmeena's mother. Yasmeena was the third of her four daughters. She and her husband Yusuf farmed and, after the agricultural season, Yusuf worked as a carpenter. When the armed rebellion against Indian rule began in 1990, their austere but contented lives began to change.
Separatist militants had a big presence in Samboora village - Yusuf became enamoured and joined them, Mughli told me. In 1993, he was arrested by Indian troops and taken away. Mughli supported her daughters, working as a daily-wage labourer in the village fields and spinning wool. Yasmeena was 10 and her sister, Roheena, 12. During the three years Yusuf was in prison, the Indian army began funding a group of counter-insurgent militants called Ikhwanis, who murdered anyone they suspected of being sympathetic to the separatist militants.
One of the most notorious, Papa Kishtwari, operated in the Samboora area. "He sent a letter to Yusuf ordering him to work in his house as a carpenter," Mughli recalled. Yusuf complied and in return Kishtwari escorted Yusuf to the local sufi shrine, the social centre of the village, where they would be sure to be seen together. Villagers and militants from the biggest Kashmiri group, Hizbul Mujahideen, began seeing Yusuf as a collaborator. Young men with guns began lurking near their house, and when Mughli saw them off with an axe, letters containing death threats followed. And so did raids by Indian troops and counter-insurgency police, who routinely pursue militants released from prison and keep the pressure on them to provide information about their militant associates.
The family lived an uneasy, anxiety-filled life. Yasmeena and Roheena dropped out of school in the late 1990s. In early 2002, Yusuf was abducted by unknown gunmen and found tortured and bleeding almost to death in the saffron fields near his village. Yasmeena and Mughli carried him to a Srinagar hospital and spent the next few months nursing him.
On his return from hospital, Yusuf looked to the Pakistan-based militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, for help. A commander of the group, Abu Hafiz, and his bodyguard, Adnan, offered Yusuf protection if he built an underground hideout in his house where they could live. Yusuf agreed to the barter, and the two moved in.
"Hafiz was against any romantic involvement with the women of the family sheltering them, but Adnan was attracted to Yasmeena," said a senior Kashmir police officer, who followed the family for years. Around a year later, Hafiz was killed in a gun battle with Indian troops. Adnan stayed on in the hideout. His romance with Yasmeena continued and they married in September 2004. "A secret marriage was performed without any social ceremony. Our informers saw Yasmeena and Adnan together at various places. She began helping him with transporting explosives and weapons," said the officer, whom Mughli had described as a "decent" man.
Still a target for the authorities, Yusuf left home and began living as a fugitive with Pakistani militants. "Mother and I would be scared but Yasmeena looked the soldiers and policemen in the eye and shouted that we did not know where Father was," said Roheena, now aged 24. In December 2004, a few months after Yasmeena and Adnan married, a joint team of the Indian army and a police special operations group raided her house. The underground hideout was discovered; explosives and ammunition recovered. "They broke the window panes, pulled apart the doors and dug up the house. They abused and beat us up and interrogated Yasmeena throughout the day. That evening she left home and never returned," said Roheena.
Roheena was suspicious and fearful of the repercussions of what she might say - the conflict has made Kashmir a paranoid valley - but she did add: "Yasmeena was afraid that the army and the police would come again. We realised that she had joined the militants."
"She just left and never came back," said Mughli, breaking down and crying inconsolably. There was no search, no contacting of relatives - they knew she must be with her husband Adnan.
Mughli and Roheena clammed up when I mentioned Yasmeena's marriage. Many villagers had mentioned the humiliation of the family after rumours and gossip about Yasmeena's affair with a militant. How could a girl marry a man who was bound to be killed or arrested sooner or later?
She was not the first. I thought of Asiya Andrabi, who had married a militant commander, now in prison. She founded and heads the puritanical Islamist women's group Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Muslim Community), that supports the armed militancy and ran a failed campaign to make Kashmiri women wear veils in 1990. Andrabi resurfaced in the public sphere in the summer of 2004, when she and her activists harassed young couples catching a few moments of intimacy in the claustrophobic cabins of internet cafes or sharing lunch in dimly-lit restaurants.
In newspaper photographs, Andrabi looked like a female Zorro, a veiled woman raising fists covered in white gloves. She had become a born-again Muslim in 1986, a time when she'd been feeling depressed and thwarted because her family forbade her from pursuing postgraduate studies in biochemistry in the distant Indian city of Pune. I met her in her Srinagar house in mid-June; she was barely four and a half feet tall and covered in her signature veil from head to toe. Andrabi was not surprised by Yasmeena's decision to marry an Islamic militant from Pakistan, and considered it an honour for any Kashmiri woman to do so.
I was sceptical whether Yasmeena would have shared Andrabi's viewpoint. Yasmeena's mother Mughli and sister Roheena didn't wear a veil or seem to espouse Andrabi's zealous attitude towards Islam. When I first visited, the family invited me for tea inside their tiny kitchen-cum-living room. I was struck by a framed picture hanging above their television set. "It is the only picture of Yasmeena left with us," said Roheena. A girl with stern black eyes stared from the brightly tinted collage, a thick lock of hair falling on her right cheek, in the style of a Bollywood actress.
On my way back I met Inspector Manzoor Lone, the police officer heading the counter-insurgency operations around Yasmeena's village. He had just returned to his fortess-like office in Pampore town after a gun battle in which two militants were killed. On a chart pasted on a wall in his office, the names of the slain militants are crossed out in red ink. Lone had raided Yasmeena's house on various occasions. "I don't think she was an ideologically motivated militant. It was simply a love story," he said.
Even Asiya Andrabi opposed the involvement of women in militancy. She argued that Islam did not allow women to be combatants, especially suicide bombers. "It is against the dignity of a Muslim woman that the parts of her body be strewn in a public place. If a combatant or a suicide bomber is a woman, her dead body is bound to fall or be scattered in a place full of men," she told me. She supported suicide bombing by men; her objection to suicide attacks by women seemed to rest on the notion that a woman's modesty must be preserved even in death.
Andrabi was critical of the militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed for allowing Yasmeena to play an active role. "They use girls as couriers for explosives because girls can easily pass through check posts. I think Yasmeena was a courier and the explosives went off accidentally. Later, they glorified her death and claimed her as a suicide bomber. It was shocking for me," she said. Strangely, some senior officers in the counter-insurgency police agreed with her assessment. In another rare accord, both Jaish-e-Mohammed and police records in the district court described Yasmeena as a suicide bomber. Who was right? Was an explosion planned or was Yasmeena a courier so desperate to avoid detection that she had strapped the lethal cargo to her chest?
I went back to the police officers who had followed the tragic journey of her fa~mily.
Some months after the December 2004 raid on Yasmeena's house, her husband Adnan had been arrested by police in the Indian capital, New Delhi. "He was in Delhi to receive cash for his group from a contact. The contact had already been arrested by the Delhi police and had called Adnan at their behest. After Adnan was tortured, he provided us with information about his militant group.
With his help, we were able to arrest and kill a number of militants in southern Kashmir, where he used to operate," said a senior officer. How would a 21-year-old girl, who had married a militant, joined his organisation, and lived the life of a fugitive, react to her husband's arrest and the prospect of him spending an unknown number of years in some Indian prison, or a brief report describing his death under police fire while trying to "escape"?
In the overworked Psychiatric Diseases Hospital of Srinagar, I met Mushtaq Margoob, the foremost psychiatrist of Kashmir, who has spent the past 16 years - all the years of Kashmir's armed conflict - treating people with post-traumatic stress. In his research on post-conflict suicide, he found that the age group most inclined towards suicide was 20-25. "Leaving home and working as a militant, Yasmeena would have lived with the constant fear of a raid by troops.
She and her husband and others of the group would have constantly changed hideouts. It's bound to lead to severe adjustment problems," he said. Yasmeena's father had been in prison when she was an adolescent, and she had married a militant at 20. "A girl like Yasmeena, who lacked paternal love, would have had a strong emotional attachment to her husband. And if he was arrested and she continued to be a militant without any emotional support or security, she was bound to become suicidal," Margoob added.
Was being a suicide bomber or a courier of explosives (which also exposes one to the risk of certain death at the smallest mistake), the only way out for Yasmeena? Could she not have surrendered, spent some time in jail, and returned to lead a "normal" life in her village?
I recalled Firdausa, a girl from the south Kashmir town of Shopian, who loved and secretly married a Pakistani militant. They tried leaving for Pakistan after securing fake Indian passports, but were arrested by the police in January 2006 after the news of their marriage spread. Firdausa was released after a month and returned to live with her parents in Shopian town, around 50km south of Srinagar. Most people I met in Shopian advised me against meeting her. "Militants still visit her place and you never know when the army raids," said Rashid, an elderly teacher. He was uncomfortable with a Kashmiri girl marrying a Pakistani militant who might have chosen to call Kashmir his war but was not accepted as part of Kashmiri society.
The younger men I met were harsher. "If a Pakistani militant dies in a battle with Indian troops, we would give him a Muslim burial, but he is not one of us. Firdausa has come back to live with her parents, but our town sees her as a wayward woman, a prostitute. No man here will be ready to marry her," said Manzoor Ahmad, a young student. Firdausa's town, Shopian, and Yasmeena's village, Samboora, are an hour apart and alike in all respects. It seemed unlikely that Yasmeena would have been able to return to a normal life.
I revisited Yasmeena's family to inquire whether she had talked about being a militant. This time I met her mother Mughli and Yasmeena's eldest sister, who is married and lives in a distant village. "She never visited me at my in-laws' place as we live near an army camp," the sister said. I was struck when she told me her husband was a soldier in the Indian army, which is rare among Kashmiris. It seemed all the stranger considering two family members, father and daughter, were militants. "Her husband joined the army because that was the only job available, and we got them married because he is my brother's son," Mughli explained.
I asked her whether Yasmeena talked about martyrdom after the troops raided their house, when her father was in prison or when he was forced to work for counter-insurgents. "No! Never! She did the household chores and worked in the fields. She loved eating, attended all marriages we were invited to, and sang marriage songs. She never spoke about wanting to fight or being a martyr." Mughli held my arm and broke down. "I will tell you why she died like that," she said, pausing between sobs. "A martyr's death was the only honourable option for my daughter. Thousands came here to congratulate me on her martyrdom." Then she fell silent and sobbed.
I walked to the local graveyard on the main road, where around 20 people killed in the conflict were buried. The marble tombstones had names of the dead, dates of their deaths, and verses expressing longing for independence from India, calligraphed in different styles. In a corner I found Yasmeena's grave; someone had showered rose petals around it. I was struck by the verse on her tombstone:
This generous soil sheltered me
After the suspicions of a heartless world
The lament against the censure of a conservative rural society spoke of the despair of a young woman whose tragic family history and reckless heart had pushed her into dangerous militant terrain, and further. Standing beside her grave I watched a torrent of young girls rush out of the school adjacent to the graveyard and head home along the dusty road. Seven years back Yasmeena had been one of them. I hoped that none of them ever has a life like hers.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/05/pakistan.weekend7
Monday, March 30, 2009
filmstars and politics
There is a picture of Salman Khan (he is a Bollywood actor, notorious for beating up his girlfriends including Ms World Aishwarya Rai, hunting animals and mowing down people sleeping on footpaths) talking to Congress party’s Unnao candidate in today’s Indian Express.
It repulses me on two accounts.
First, having failed to do much for the state of Uttar Pradesh (where Unnao is), Congress has to fall back on a film star with such maligned credentials. Second, politics in India has become so convoluted that we are compensating our need for leaders and statesmen with filmstars. It is a pathetic irony that ‘real’ social workers for all their flaws go unnoticed while the hits and flops of Bollywood, Tollywood, Mollywood hog attention.
The only thing respectable about the pony-sporting picture of Sallu miya is he has not switched to a khadi pajama kurta avtaar.
The IE article mentions that Shahrukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Govinda and Naghma will also be canvassing for the Congress.
What is Naghma’s claim to fame? If I stretch my memory, I can only recollect a rain song from Yalgaar where she moans and cavorts in Sanjay Dutt’s arms to a sexually explicit song (it happens to be one of my favourites by the way) and ofcourse Ganguly.
Priety Zinta besides doing feel good movies, co-owns an IPL team and is the girl friend of the Wadia scion. Shahrukh Khan is simply King Khan.
Will I vote for Congress just because Shahrukh knocks at my door tomorrow and says pppplsss vote for Congress. Why should I?
Why should I vote for any MLA or MP who has a film star to show off for his or hers five years of work in the constituency?
Congress is not alone in parading film stars at election rallies. The Bachhan family is the star attraction at SP (Samajwadi Party) rallies. As mascots, campaigners and candidates, they have always been exploited for their mass appeal.
Sanjay Dutt , SP’s MP candidate from Lucknow (capital of Uttar Pradesh) is the party’s latest trump card. The man was booked under TADA, has served a considerable jail sentence. If I am not mistaken, he had never set foot in Lucknow earlier.
At the risk of sounding elitist, has an average Indian voter become so dumb that filmstars can be dangled as carrots for votes?
(I read recently that as a sitting Member of Parliament, Govinda did not ask a single question during his tenure as a Congress MP. It is another matter that nor did Mamta di)
You ask me if mafias and criminals can contest why not Sanjay Dutt? Let me give you the stalest of all arguments-for the very reason mafias and gangsters should not.
Why is a clean image and solid credentials no more a criteria for being elected to central and state legislatures in India?
Have we become so inert in our responses that we cannot rise beyond group allegiance and keep such people off our executive institutions? If empowering masses means Dutt, Sallu, Govinda and their ilk stepping up the political ladder then the idea of the people, by the people and by the people needs re-examination.
PS: http://entertainment.oneindia.in/bollywood/features/2009/cine-stars-elections-230309.html
Check this link to know film stars who would be contesting in the elections this time.
It repulses me on two accounts.
First, having failed to do much for the state of Uttar Pradesh (where Unnao is), Congress has to fall back on a film star with such maligned credentials. Second, politics in India has become so convoluted that we are compensating our need for leaders and statesmen with filmstars. It is a pathetic irony that ‘real’ social workers for all their flaws go unnoticed while the hits and flops of Bollywood, Tollywood, Mollywood hog attention.
The only thing respectable about the pony-sporting picture of Sallu miya is he has not switched to a khadi pajama kurta avtaar.
The IE article mentions that Shahrukh Khan, Preity Zinta, Govinda and Naghma will also be canvassing for the Congress.
What is Naghma’s claim to fame? If I stretch my memory, I can only recollect a rain song from Yalgaar where she moans and cavorts in Sanjay Dutt’s arms to a sexually explicit song (it happens to be one of my favourites by the way) and ofcourse Ganguly.
Priety Zinta besides doing feel good movies, co-owns an IPL team and is the girl friend of the Wadia scion. Shahrukh Khan is simply King Khan.
Will I vote for Congress just because Shahrukh knocks at my door tomorrow and says pppplsss vote for Congress. Why should I?
Why should I vote for any MLA or MP who has a film star to show off for his or hers five years of work in the constituency?
Congress is not alone in parading film stars at election rallies. The Bachhan family is the star attraction at SP (Samajwadi Party) rallies. As mascots, campaigners and candidates, they have always been exploited for their mass appeal.
Sanjay Dutt , SP’s MP candidate from Lucknow (capital of Uttar Pradesh) is the party’s latest trump card. The man was booked under TADA, has served a considerable jail sentence. If I am not mistaken, he had never set foot in Lucknow earlier.
At the risk of sounding elitist, has an average Indian voter become so dumb that filmstars can be dangled as carrots for votes?
(I read recently that as a sitting Member of Parliament, Govinda did not ask a single question during his tenure as a Congress MP. It is another matter that nor did Mamta di)
You ask me if mafias and criminals can contest why not Sanjay Dutt? Let me give you the stalest of all arguments-for the very reason mafias and gangsters should not.
Why is a clean image and solid credentials no more a criteria for being elected to central and state legislatures in India?
Have we become so inert in our responses that we cannot rise beyond group allegiance and keep such people off our executive institutions? If empowering masses means Dutt, Sallu, Govinda and their ilk stepping up the political ladder then the idea of the people, by the people and by the people needs re-examination.
PS: http://entertainment.oneindia.in/bollywood/features/2009/cine-stars-elections-230309.html
Check this link to know film stars who would be contesting in the elections this time.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Auto ki sawari
Everyday life in India is a series of mini struggles. On a daily basis you work your way through errant maids, leering men, horn mad traffic, jostling crowds, office gossip and if you happen to live in Mumbai or Delhi then auto rickshaw walas.
Boarding a train or a bus and getting down in one piece may test your athleticism but wrangling over the fare before you get into an auto in Delhi or fuming within as you see a tampered metre push up the fare both in Delhi and Mumbai tests your mettle.
I limit myself to the two cities because I have had a chance to experience auto woes anywhere else.
If you choose to pay by the metre in Delhi you are doomed. All geared to haggle over the kiraya (fare), you harden your expressions, look straight at bhaiya’s face and let out a deep, authoritative, "kitne me chaloge?" Bhaiya will quote triple or even five times more than the price. Mostly he will agree to a lower fare. However if it is a group of autos rickshaws waiting for passengers then they are difficult to bring round.
I ended up paying Rs. 45 from Munirka to my campus for an auto ride that by the metre would not had come to more than Rs. 15 back in 2002.
On my first day in Delhi, auto rickshaw drivers asked for Rs. 180-200 for a trip from the New Delhi railway station to my university campus. When I thrust forward the prepaid slip most of them slinked away. In case you are really desperate to cut a cheap deal then get ready to wait while they look for a passenger who would be willing to share the auto rickshaw.
It was always better if one was travelling in a group. Boys especially could outmatch the autowallah in the duel of vocals and rain a few abuses when the latter refused to budge from the exaggerated fare.
A bigger problem in Delhi was that if you are a girl you could never relax in an auto. If you did not end up being fleeced or robbed or even kidnapped in some cases, you are certain to be showered with abuses if you protest against the fare. I cannot generalise or call it every day but living in Delhi you are unlikely to escape it.
Autowallahs in Mumbai on the other hand do not have to be asked "how much?" You bark out the destination, watch the metre, the traffic jam, which route the auto takes, sit back and resign yourself to paying the number that flashes on the metre.
There you do not need to argue over the rates or say where you want to go before you climb in. Autorickshaw community in Mumbai is supposed to be most civil, complying and at your service. However, if you are new to the city and habitually ask, "Andheri station chaloge kya?" then the autowallah might shake his head slightly and speed off. Auto drivers sometimes refuse to go to nearby destinations and do not stop even if you wave to them. And if it is raining, you will realise that money can buy a lot of things but not convince an auto guy to stop for you. Overall Mumbai auto rickshaw drivers are much easier to deal with than their Dilli cousins.
It is a love hate relation. Public transport system in India is so inadequate to handle the sea of humanity that auto rickshaws are a necessity. If fare metres could be made tamper proof, travelling could be much easier and uneventful.
Boarding a train or a bus and getting down in one piece may test your athleticism but wrangling over the fare before you get into an auto in Delhi or fuming within as you see a tampered metre push up the fare both in Delhi and Mumbai tests your mettle.
I limit myself to the two cities because I have had a chance to experience auto woes anywhere else.
If you choose to pay by the metre in Delhi you are doomed. All geared to haggle over the kiraya (fare), you harden your expressions, look straight at bhaiya’s face and let out a deep, authoritative, "kitne me chaloge?" Bhaiya will quote triple or even five times more than the price. Mostly he will agree to a lower fare. However if it is a group of autos rickshaws waiting for passengers then they are difficult to bring round.
I ended up paying Rs. 45 from Munirka to my campus for an auto ride that by the metre would not had come to more than Rs. 15 back in 2002.
On my first day in Delhi, auto rickshaw drivers asked for Rs. 180-200 for a trip from the New Delhi railway station to my university campus. When I thrust forward the prepaid slip most of them slinked away. In case you are really desperate to cut a cheap deal then get ready to wait while they look for a passenger who would be willing to share the auto rickshaw.
It was always better if one was travelling in a group. Boys especially could outmatch the autowallah in the duel of vocals and rain a few abuses when the latter refused to budge from the exaggerated fare.
A bigger problem in Delhi was that if you are a girl you could never relax in an auto. If you did not end up being fleeced or robbed or even kidnapped in some cases, you are certain to be showered with abuses if you protest against the fare. I cannot generalise or call it every day but living in Delhi you are unlikely to escape it.
Autowallahs in Mumbai on the other hand do not have to be asked "how much?" You bark out the destination, watch the metre, the traffic jam, which route the auto takes, sit back and resign yourself to paying the number that flashes on the metre.
There you do not need to argue over the rates or say where you want to go before you climb in. Autorickshaw community in Mumbai is supposed to be most civil, complying and at your service. However, if you are new to the city and habitually ask, "Andheri station chaloge kya?" then the autowallah might shake his head slightly and speed off. Auto drivers sometimes refuse to go to nearby destinations and do not stop even if you wave to them. And if it is raining, you will realise that money can buy a lot of things but not convince an auto guy to stop for you. Overall Mumbai auto rickshaw drivers are much easier to deal with than their Dilli cousins.
It is a love hate relation. Public transport system in India is so inadequate to handle the sea of humanity that auto rickshaws are a necessity. If fare metres could be made tamper proof, travelling could be much easier and uneventful.
PS: There has been a massive influx of North Indians especially from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar into Mumbai. The Shiv Sena’s and lately Raj Thackeray’s tirade against North Indians for spoiling Mumbai culture has partial roots in the changing face of auto rickshaw community in the city. It is alleged by many (and sometime I agree) that bhaiyas have brought in brusqueness to Mumbai’s Maharashtrian fabric (please don’t bay for my blood) In spite of the headaches they cause, true blooded Mumbaikars (if that is a credible term) cannot do without them.
Photo courtsey: www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=107102
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Kissa IPL ka
BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) is a powerful entity I am given to understand. It is made powerful by the money it earns when millions of cricket crazy men (women and children) turn on their television sets.
(So if the Aussies dare to nudge back another BCCI chief, hell would have no fury like the Indian board)
BCCI hit on another golden goose with the brilliant (still not sure) concept of Twenty-Twenty matches that had even not-interested ones like me hooked.
Rewind back to 2008...
Twenty-Twenty cricket turned out to be as much of a potboiler as a game.
Like following the antics of Big Boss inmates, one watched with curiosity if sparks flied between Ganguly and Ponting. The idea of national teams pitted against each other got messed up totally. I was glued at times not to the game but facial expressions and body languages of Dhoni, Harbhajan and Sehwag who sweated it out like warring family members in an Ekta Kapoor serial. Sreesanth and Harbhajan added chutzpah to the gentlemen’s game. For all his on-field bashing of Indian batsmen, one could not but fall for Shane Warne. My heart went all out to Adam Gilchrist as Deccan Chargers kept on losing.
Fast forward to 2009...
IPL has been shifted to South Africa. Its coincidence with general elections in India has heightened the security threat perception. Following the Mumbai attacks and SriLankan cricket team’s tryst with death in Pakistan, few would be willing to take chances. And why not?
If India’s past records are anything to go by, it is clear that security and intelligence agencies despite all their love for the nation, fail when it comes to detecting young men in jeans and t-shirts running across city roads with kilos of ammunition in their backpacks.
Mumbai attacks are nearly passe. Except Kasab and dangling proof at Pakistan, the Indian government has not delivered much in terms of answers, counter-action and preemption measures. Atleast that is what a laywoman like me thinks.
Two key improvisations were expected in the modus operandi of India’s security forces after they were caught unawares in Kargil and Mumbai. Training in high mountain counter-insurgency operations was realised to be essential for the Indian army after Kargil. (I recently read on a blog that terrorists/insurgents in Kashmir have better night vision gear that the Indian soldiers)
Mumbai attacks bared the need for better training and coordination among paramilitary forces responsible for internal security. (Did you read about the Kashmir police under cover cop who was arrested for supplying sim cards used by the gunmen in Mumbai? It was a blunder that blew off months of hard work by the Kashmir police to infiltrate a militant group)
Coming back to the IPL, many of my brethren and behens back home are losing sleep over why the event has been shifted out of the country. The issue almost snowballed into a political seesaw between the two bigwigs of Indian politics.
Though Lalit Modi may seem to be on a personal vendetta, his decision appears to be wise. If a single bullet is fired or a noise heard during any of the matches, foreign cricketers will pack off immediately. India will be branded as dangerous and cricket teams would tick off South Asia from their itineraries for a long time.
Could the BCCI afford this?
In India, terrorism and terrorists have become as ‘every-day’ as robberies, murders and kaccha-baniyan groups in smaller cities.
You may not die of cancer or be hit by a car but you might step on a listless tiffin box and be blown to so many pieces that your family may only manage to find your little finger to cremate.
Few years ago, on the day when a bomb exploded in the Sarojini Nagar market in New Delhi, I happened to have deferred my morning visit to the market and decided to go in the evening instead. I have had brushes with death but then I could see it coming and sparing me by millimetres and degrees. But being blown off in the middle of a sentence, a transaction or while gulping down a puchka?
If a country cannot handle two mega events simultaneously (I wonder how will they ever bid for the Olympics) it is good that IPL moves to foreign shores. It spares all of us some more anxiety, fear and grief.
(So if the Aussies dare to nudge back another BCCI chief, hell would have no fury like the Indian board)
BCCI hit on another golden goose with the brilliant (still not sure) concept of Twenty-Twenty matches that had even not-interested ones like me hooked.
Rewind back to 2008...
Twenty-Twenty cricket turned out to be as much of a potboiler as a game.
Like following the antics of Big Boss inmates, one watched with curiosity if sparks flied between Ganguly and Ponting. The idea of national teams pitted against each other got messed up totally. I was glued at times not to the game but facial expressions and body languages of Dhoni, Harbhajan and Sehwag who sweated it out like warring family members in an Ekta Kapoor serial. Sreesanth and Harbhajan added chutzpah to the gentlemen’s game. For all his on-field bashing of Indian batsmen, one could not but fall for Shane Warne. My heart went all out to Adam Gilchrist as Deccan Chargers kept on losing.
Fast forward to 2009...
IPL has been shifted to South Africa. Its coincidence with general elections in India has heightened the security threat perception. Following the Mumbai attacks and SriLankan cricket team’s tryst with death in Pakistan, few would be willing to take chances. And why not?
If India’s past records are anything to go by, it is clear that security and intelligence agencies despite all their love for the nation, fail when it comes to detecting young men in jeans and t-shirts running across city roads with kilos of ammunition in their backpacks.
Mumbai attacks are nearly passe. Except Kasab and dangling proof at Pakistan, the Indian government has not delivered much in terms of answers, counter-action and preemption measures. Atleast that is what a laywoman like me thinks.
Two key improvisations were expected in the modus operandi of India’s security forces after they were caught unawares in Kargil and Mumbai. Training in high mountain counter-insurgency operations was realised to be essential for the Indian army after Kargil. (I recently read on a blog that terrorists/insurgents in Kashmir have better night vision gear that the Indian soldiers)
Mumbai attacks bared the need for better training and coordination among paramilitary forces responsible for internal security. (Did you read about the Kashmir police under cover cop who was arrested for supplying sim cards used by the gunmen in Mumbai? It was a blunder that blew off months of hard work by the Kashmir police to infiltrate a militant group)
Coming back to the IPL, many of my brethren and behens back home are losing sleep over why the event has been shifted out of the country. The issue almost snowballed into a political seesaw between the two bigwigs of Indian politics.
Though Lalit Modi may seem to be on a personal vendetta, his decision appears to be wise. If a single bullet is fired or a noise heard during any of the matches, foreign cricketers will pack off immediately. India will be branded as dangerous and cricket teams would tick off South Asia from their itineraries for a long time.
Could the BCCI afford this?
In India, terrorism and terrorists have become as ‘every-day’ as robberies, murders and kaccha-baniyan groups in smaller cities.
You may not die of cancer or be hit by a car but you might step on a listless tiffin box and be blown to so many pieces that your family may only manage to find your little finger to cremate.
Few years ago, on the day when a bomb exploded in the Sarojini Nagar market in New Delhi, I happened to have deferred my morning visit to the market and decided to go in the evening instead. I have had brushes with death but then I could see it coming and sparing me by millimetres and degrees. But being blown off in the middle of a sentence, a transaction or while gulping down a puchka?
If a country cannot handle two mega events simultaneously (I wonder how will they ever bid for the Olympics) it is good that IPL moves to foreign shores. It spares all of us some more anxiety, fear and grief.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Existential?
A friend forwarded this to poem to me. It is simple yet full of meaning…
GIRLS IN MY CIRCLE
When I was little,
I used to believe in the concept of one best friend,
And then I started to become a woman.
And then I found out that if you allow your heart to open up,
God would show you the best in many friends.
One friend is needed when you're going through things with your man.
Another friend is needed when you're going through things with your mom.
Another will sit beside you in the bleachers as you delight in your children
and their activities.
Another when you want to shop, share, heal, hurt, joke, or just be.
One friend will say, 'Let's cry together,'
Another , 'Let's fight together,'
Another , 'Let's walk away together.'
One friend will meet your spiritual need,
Another your shoe fetish,
Another your love for movies,
Another will be with you in your season of confusion,
Another will be your clarifier,
Another the wind beneath your wings.
But whatever their assignment in your life,
On whatever the occasion,
On whatever the day,
Or wherever you need them to meet you with their gym shoes on and hair
pulled back,
Or to hold you back from making a complete fool of yourself ..
Those are your best friends.
It may all be wrapped up in one woman, But for many, it's wrapped up in
several..
One from 7th grade,
One from high school,
Several from the college years,
a couple from old jobs,
On some days your mother,
On some days your neighbor,
On others, your sisters,
And on some days, your daughters.
So whether they've been your friend for 20 minutes or 20 years,
…God has placed (them) in your life…
To make a difference.
Thanks for being in my circle.
...It is comforting to know that one has many friends simply because the same person may not be a partner in all your crimes. Like a dress for every occasion and a different knife for each course of meal, a friend to indulge in every mood is needed.
A soulmate may not understand your sudden fetish for red nail polish. Your silver coloured shoes and blue mascara may perplex a friend who likes to talk about aesthetics and serious stuff. Another is a movie freak like you but balks at anything more cerebral than chicken soup for soul.
There are spiritual types you rush to when a tragedy (you know I am so fed up of life) strikes. One of your friends shares your love for Ghazals and Cohen but cannot groove at Govinda's songs. Aasha is good to go to Khana Khazana but Sasha is needed to unwind in Lan Kwai Fong. I go to A to share my feminist rant but callup B to drown my maid blues.
Someone I know once told me how she had lately become asocial but back home she had friends to go out for coffee, to shop, to talk…but then it depresses someone like me who has to try very hard to get talking and open up to other people.
GIRLS IN MY CIRCLE
When I was little,
I used to believe in the concept of one best friend,
And then I started to become a woman.
And then I found out that if you allow your heart to open up,
God would show you the best in many friends.
One friend is needed when you're going through things with your man.
Another friend is needed when you're going through things with your mom.
Another will sit beside you in the bleachers as you delight in your children
and their activities.
Another when you want to shop, share, heal, hurt, joke, or just be.
One friend will say, 'Let's cry together,'
Another , 'Let's fight together,'
Another , 'Let's walk away together.'
One friend will meet your spiritual need,
Another your shoe fetish,
Another your love for movies,
Another will be with you in your season of confusion,
Another will be your clarifier,
Another the wind beneath your wings.
But whatever their assignment in your life,
On whatever the occasion,
On whatever the day,
Or wherever you need them to meet you with their gym shoes on and hair
pulled back,
Or to hold you back from making a complete fool of yourself ..
Those are your best friends.
It may all be wrapped up in one woman, But for many, it's wrapped up in
several..
One from 7th grade,
One from high school,
Several from the college years,
a couple from old jobs,
On some days your mother,
On some days your neighbor,
On others, your sisters,
And on some days, your daughters.
So whether they've been your friend for 20 minutes or 20 years,
…God has placed (them) in your life…
To make a difference.
Thanks for being in my circle.
...It is comforting to know that one has many friends simply because the same person may not be a partner in all your crimes. Like a dress for every occasion and a different knife for each course of meal, a friend to indulge in every mood is needed.
A soulmate may not understand your sudden fetish for red nail polish. Your silver coloured shoes and blue mascara may perplex a friend who likes to talk about aesthetics and serious stuff. Another is a movie freak like you but balks at anything more cerebral than chicken soup for soul.
There are spiritual types you rush to when a tragedy (you know I am so fed up of life) strikes. One of your friends shares your love for Ghazals and Cohen but cannot groove at Govinda's songs. Aasha is good to go to Khana Khazana but Sasha is needed to unwind in Lan Kwai Fong. I go to A to share my feminist rant but callup B to drown my maid blues.
Someone I know once told me how she had lately become asocial but back home she had friends to go out for coffee, to shop, to talk…but then it depresses someone like me who has to try very hard to get talking and open up to other people.
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