TV CHANNELS RING HOLLOW

Granted that the TV Channels are doing the greatest service to the nation by broadcasting live, picturised events that awaken the conscience of humanity - yet they do the greatest damage to their own cause through their advertisments which become an unbearable nuisance and eyesore at such times.

Imagine news like this with interruptions like this every few minutes, sometimes even every few seconds:

"The dead body of the girl who died in the Singapore Hospital arrived in New Delhi at...

But first this break

Buy a bag of potato chips...

Here is the perfect Breakfast Cereal...

Here are the perfect electric heaters...

Use only this toothpaste all dentists recommend..

"The question of halting the incidents of Rape in this country should be taken up by a special session of Parliament.."

But first a word from our sponsers...

If these TV Channels are so conscious of the interests of the nation and of the public then why cannot they restrain themselves for a few days from inviting advertisments?

It will result in a loss of a few hundred crores of rupees to them -- but so what? Will that not be a small sacrifice to make for the interests of the girls being raped?..

Will not this sacrifice on their part show their noble intentions for the people of the country and give them sufficient credence as the moral conscience of the nation?

Or must the high ideals be interrupted by potato bags and toothpastes?

Granted that the politicians and police are shedding crocodile tears at the rape and death of the girl -- are not the TV Channels doing the same through their potato chips and toothpastes?

Where is the genuine concern and the sacrifice that accompanies genuine concern?

DEATH OF AN ANGEL

Do angels ever die? No they are eternal and immortal. Yet they come down to earth and suffer in human form, leaving the earth as martyrs and leaving behind a guiding light for humanity.

The 23 year old girl, yet unnamed, who was gang-raped in New Delhi and tortured, on Dec 16, and who suffered for 12 days in hospital has finally left her body and gone to her eternal home in heaven.

God has taken her in His own embrace to free her from the pain that she was enduring and which she would have to endure all her life if she had survived.

Her suffering and her death have opened the eyes of India and indeed the world to the indignities and atrocities being perpetrated on women the world over, and of the need to change the mental outlook of men towards women. Indeed no rape case has received so much attention in the world as this one, perhaps because of the enormity of the suffering involved, and the because of the tireless efforts of the world media to get the message across to the people of the world.

When will men give women the rightful place that they deserve in society, when will they cease to look upon them as sex objects?

With the death of the girl and her pending last rites in New Delhi, the politicians and leaders are appealing to the people to "maintain peace" in order to give peace to the soul of the departed. The TV channels are telling us that "security has been tightened" in the capitol where they show policemen with guns in the streets. It will be a fine welcome to the dead body of the girl when it is taken out in a funeral procession.

India being the largest democracy in the world, must follow the letter of the Law as laid down in its own constitution. And under the Law for rape a minimum of 10 years imprisonment would have been all that the rapists would have got in the courts.

But now that the girl is dead, the crime will fall under Murder and the rapists can now be convicted for murder and be given the Maximum Sentence for Murder.

It took the Death and martyrdom of the girl to bring this about.

What will stem the madness that seems to grip the people of the world with the ending of 2012?

First there was the news of the terrible shooting in a US school in which 21 children were shot dead by a demented man, and then there was news of the rape of this young girl in New Delhi by demented men - and rapes and atrocities that continue in every part of the world.

If this rot continues unabated, would we not be right in saying that it is in fact the end of the world?

Maybe not in the Hollywood style of volcanoes, meteors and sonamis, but certainly the moral death of the world, the death of the moral conscience of a human being?

If it were not for the righteous who are still upon earth, yes, we would say that this was the end.

MADNESS LET LOOSE IN ALL ITS FURY

On the 20th of December 2012, a young medical student was brutally raped in a moving bus by six men in New Delhi. Not being content with the rape these beasts had thrust an iron rod repeatedly into her vagina until they tore through it and entered the intestines, ripping them inside her body. She is now struggling for her life in a Singapore Hospital, and the doctors say that her condition is extremely critical. They do not know whether she will survive sufficiently to be able to endure an intestinal transplant.

In the meanwhile the citizens of India have taken to the streets in mass protests calling upon the government to take stringent action against rapists and to ensure the safety of girls in the country.

These citizens are being met by barricades of police force with water cannons and batons, and the confrontations are going on daily. It is terrible to see the sufferings of the crowds in this bitter cold.

To make matters worse the politicians, instead of being totally sympathetic with the girls are putting the blame on them, on their mode of living, on their dress. One insensitive politician described the girls as taking to the streets in demonstrations in the day time and going to discos in the nights, "painted and dainted".

Other politicians have roped in various religious organisations and are busy holding bon fires of jean pants and T shirts of girls in public squares, blaming the clothes for being provocative and inviting rapes..

While all this is going on, the rapists in the land have gone on an unprecedented raping spree, and almost daily incidents are being reported of gang rapes of girls from all corners of the land. It is almost as if the rapists are daring people to catch them. One girl was raped and thrown in front of a police station. Another girl went to report a rape and was raped by the police officer in the police station. The stories go on and on and on... the news channels have become like horror channels.. and all this in India the land of peace..

So what are we witnessing here? Very soon some astrologer will be coming along to tell us on TV Channels that the "stars are bad " for the girls of the land. At the moment the stars appear to have gone awry for some men in the land, seized by a midsummer madness in the middle of winter. Truly it is madness let loose in all its fury.

If 2012 is to end like this, then God help us in 2013. AS it is they say that "13" is an unlucky number.

THE LAW OF NEMESIS

Here is an ancient Persian Verse which when translated goes :

"The Time of Life passed away,

The good and the bad, passed away,

All that was beautiful and all that was ugly passed away!

Woe unto thee O Tormentor!

The torment that thou unleashed upon me,

Has passed over my head,

And fallen around thy own!."

People who perpetrate torment upon others may think that they have escaped retribution for a while.

But there is an inexorable law of Nemesis, inevitable in Creation itself, which says in a silent, unspoken manner, "Thou shallt reap what thou sow!"

And invariably the Law is seen to act. It has been defined by scientists also in other terms as Newtons Law -

"To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction!"

When a rock is hurled in the sky it inevitably comes down and hits the man who hurled it upwards. Yes, it may take some time for the rock to return, depending on how high it has been hurled.

Some misunderstand this time gap and believe they have gone scot free after their crime - but the longer the rock takes to come back the harder it is going to hit and the greater the punishment.

THE MALAISE THAT AFFLICTS SOCIETY

New Delhi is still reeling under the horrific rape of the physiotherapist girl student in a bus. What was most dreadful was the manner in which she had been beaten by an iron rod that destroyed her intestines and the fact that she is still battling for life, and may not recover at all. And all this done by total strangers. This should be booked as a case of murder and the penalty for murder meted out to the rapists, who had left the girl for dead anyway.

Crowds are coming out in the thousands before the government representatives to protest. Girls are narrating dreadful episodes of their own - how it has become unsafe for them to be out alone or even with a friend on the streets of New Delhi or any other metropolis or even small towns for that matter. Girls are narrating how they are harassed and teased, verbally abused and pinched and pushed by strangers making obscene remarks, strangers that include not only young men but also dirty old men.

What has happened to the society at large to set hordes of demented men as predators after girls and women? Girls had been afraid of going to the police for fear of their leering glances and lewd comments. There were reports all the time of rape of girls by demented policemen, cases reported as "custodial rapes", rapes in police custody. After all the policemen were also men.

People often blame the Hindi cinemas for scenes in which girls are teased by the heroes at large, and with whom they ultimately fall in love and marry, meaning thereby that the "eve teasing" was successful for the boys. Even today whenever a group of boys spots a girl or girls walking alone, they break out into songs from Hindi films and pretend to be heroes. But along with the film songs there is also a spate of abusive and obscene comments and attempts to touch, hold, molest and even rape.

People blame the rape scenes in Hindi films, which, though cut by the censors or aborted by the heroes who arrive to the rescue in time, are still titillating to the demented minds of predators and juvenile delinquents.

And lastly people blame the revealing dresses of the heroines in Hindi films and the manner in which these are copied by the young girls in real life. But no matter how a person dresses this does not give a license to any demented predator to commit the heinous crime of rape. But who will teach the predator that?

All having said and done-- who are the people who are provoked to attack girls whatever be the reason? You have this large number of demented movie goers watching all these scenes on the cinema screen and finding their desires and obsessions going out of control.

They can be amongst either the "rahees zadaas" the spoilt children of the rich, or the workmen and mechanics, tough and violent characters, like bus drivers, amongst the proletariat and middle class.

But one must look deeper than that. One must look into the psyche that the men have, the attitude towards girls and women.

Some marriages are conducted on the basis of "good looks" alone, and there is the sexual undertone behind the selections. Women are increasingly being thought of as sex targets.

Even during the days of old, when some men married all kinds of fat and ugly women, the number of children were huge - anywhere up to 10 to 12 children. What inspired the sexual impulse to produce so many children? Would we therefore say that these men were all "over sexed"? Many women who bore so many children often died in the midst of childbirth. This was true in rich as well as poor households, the "huge families" inspired by -what? Have we ever thought of it? Was it love or simply lust?

This attitude towards women and sex has been going on since decades. The very abuses that men use, center around sisters and mothers. Who started this obscene form of abuse? Who are the people who are really responsible for this dreadful Frankenstein let loose on women today?

What we are watching today is an explosion and expression of a malaise that has been going on since years, something which had come to be "accepted as part of society" in an unspoken manner.

I still recall hearing two middle-aged professors talking to each other on the Mall Road, one of them saying to the other:

"I still have the habit of teasing a girl or two, on the Mall!!"

The situation has been so grim that generally some men cannot be trusted around women, whatever their age or calling in life, whether sober or addicted to drugs or the cinema.

And all this is happening in a land which has a religion that is dedicated to worshiping women as goddesses, a religion which widely speaks of God as existing in two forms - man as well as woman. Where respect to the female form is even greater than the respect to the male form of God.

Perhaps we need a different kind of "sex education" in schools-- where children have to be taught that it is the first and foremost duty of every citizen of the land to respect and honor women and to afford them protection. It is only when society is re-formulated through a new education of the children that a true reform will come about in the attitude of men towards women.

Maybe this should be inscribed in the Constitution of the Land as a mandatory provision for every school as part of basic education.